News and Notes. Well, Mostly Notes. Okay, All Notes.

1. My favorite event in Louisville is probably Lebowski Fest, which I attended a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the beer situation there is dire. Once you get inside the bowling alley for the main event, your beer choices are bottles of Miller Lite, Miller High Life, and Miller Genuine Draft. I managed to force a High Life down, then decided to take a walk on the wild side and get a Miller Genuine Draft. Almost immediately, friends and acquaintances started giving me shit about my selection; because apparently, even though they are both prime examples of adjunct cesspool run-off, High Life is the far more socially acceptable of the two. Being already drunk on bourbon, I couldn’t tell the difference. They both tasted like ice cold unpleasantness to me. Basically, THESE ARE THE EXACT SAME BEER. If I worked for the local Miller distributor (and please, hire me, I’m broke) I’d try to get Genuine Draft bottles placed in some bars where the cool kids hang out, because it has a serious image problem.
2. There was a recent article on the WFPL website highlighting the indirect connection between a few local coffee shops and Sojourn, the church where everyone is just so young and blatantly, self-consciously hip that it seems to be a deliberate cover up for their ultra conservative, anti-gay, anti-women ideology. As someone who works in retail, I understand that the ol’ bait and switch is as American as apple pie and screaming at immigrant children, so I can’t fault them for trying to make their church as appealing as possible to young people. In fact, I have some advice for them: One or more of their members should open a brewery. Opening a brewery is the new opening a coffee shop. If a few trust fund kids from Sojourn open a brewery and hire some of their fellow Tattooed Soldiers of Hate and their patented Disneyesque edginess to work the bar, they could dupe a lot of new converts. I won’t even charge them for the idea.
3. Am I the only person who hates session IPAs? They are everywhere, so I guess the answer is yes. Every time someone wants me to try a session IPA they say “This one tastes just like a regular IPA” and they’re always lying. Always! It tastes like water mixed with freshly mowed grass, every single time. I know hoppy beer is the crack of middle class America, but what is wrong with a nice German lager? Have you had a Gose? There might be nothing more refreshing that a Gose on a hot summer day.
4. Are bullet point articles the last refuge for someone who can’t sustain a thought long enough to write a proper full length feature? Probably.
5. Congrats to Against the Grain for unveiling plans for their massive production brewery and taproom in the Portland neighborhood. Hurray local beer! I’m so happy for their success that if they bottle a session IPA I’ll nod politely while someone else drinks it. These guys are poised to rule the world, or at least flood North America with dick and fart jokes.
6. I ended up having a good time at the haphazardly named Tap That Craft mini-brewery tour. Four overstuffed buses stopped at Great Flood, Apocalypse, BBC Taproom, and the new Fall City taproom inside 502 Winery. Those buses were crowded, Saturday-night-at-Nachbar-during-the-winter-when-it’s-too-cold-to-sit-outside-and-there’s-a-really-good-band-playing crowded. Highlights from each stop:
   1. Great Flood Brewing Co: The double IPA (the anti-session!) and beer cheese made at Lotsa Pasta using Great Flood’s brown ale were equally delicious.
   2. Apocalypse Brew Works: The Oertel’s 1912 Dark Creme Ale is back. This is Louisville brewing history in convenient liquid form, so go get some before it’s gone.
   3. BBC Taproom: The always gregarious Scott Lykins was behind the bar, so that’s automatically a high point. Scott told anyone who would listen that this was his favorite beer event ever, and he can’t wait to do it again next year. Beer wise, you can’t go wrong with Bourbon Barrel Stout, but I think my favorite was the saison aged in wine barrels.
   4. Falls City Brewing Company: This was the first time I saw the new location, and it’s really a nice space. I love their Hipster Repellent IPA. Seriously, whoever named that beer is a fucking genius, although I’m guessing he was not compensated a penny for his brilliant contribution and his genius, as usual, will go unrecognized.The four buses visited the breweries at different times, so as to not overwhelm, and the staff at each location handled things perfectly. The people on my bus were better than the people on the other buses (excluding me; I suck) and I ended up talking to a few recent transplants about how much they love what’s going on in Louisville. However, one of them said that sometimes it’s hard to be accepted by native Louisvillians if you didn’t grow up here. Come on, people, let’s put aside that “Where’d you go to high school?” crap and make new residents feel welcome. This city needs as many people who weren’t educated in Kentucky public schools as it can get.

Here are some photos from Tap That Craft from our own, John Wurth: