Beer

Hip Hops: An obligatory Oktoberfest (beer style) three-way, and grudging pumpkin ale

As our schoolteachers will attest, repetition is an inescapable element of their working lives. Students in second grade this year may be different, but the lessons are the same as those taught to last year’s cohort. Level by level, building from the previous ones, we’re introduced to the basics, intended for us all, reserving more […]

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Hip Hops: Cold beer conversation (a little truth, a little frustration)

With apologies to George Strait. If you grew up as an American during the 1960s and 70s, nothing could have prepared you for a future of stylistic diversity as it pertains to beer and brewing. Naturally the same might be said of food and dining, in a broader sense, given that our role models back […]

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Hip Hops: But what if brewing wasn’t supposed to be EZ?

A year and a half has elapsed since it was first revealed that beer would be “brewed” for the first time since the 19th century (was it ever?) in Georgetown, Indiana at a restaurant to be dubbed Rails & Ales Brew House. The time has arrived for the eatery’s soft opening days, and it plans […]

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Hip Hops: C’mon, you’re just buttering me up (or, Harry Potter’s diacetyl beer)

Having recently celebrated my 65th birthday, each passing moment brings another reminder that my life’s chronology largely predates today’s image-driven, post-literate world. My grandparents were born in the late 1890s. I taught myself to read by looking at the pictures in actual books, and we had a black and white television set until around 1971. […]

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Hip Hops: “The Beer World According to Spike,” a 1999 polemic

I tend to get testy whenever someone who works in the craft beer business takes to praising insipid High Life or bland Banquet. That’s because craft beer exists as an explicit rejection of the mainstream, which at one point 40-odd years ago was an effective monopoly of one principal beer style manufactured by a tiny […]

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Hip Hops: Does beer knowledge matter? If so, how do we know for sure?

Does knowledge matter? If so, how do we know for sure? Such a discussion might have occurred at the agora in Athens, with Socrates merrily harassing thoughtless passers-by. The question might also be ripped from today’s headlines, as when Secretary R.F. Kennedy Jr. lip syncs Pink Floyd in a post to X: “We don’t need […]

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Hip Hops: R.I.P. Jack McAuliffe (New Albion), who focused on BEER, not ephemera

There is a frequently quoted aphorism by the philosopher George Santayana, from his book Reason in Common Sense. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Admittedly, I’m old. Old enough to remember a time when beer in America was uniformly bland, watery and golden; manufactured by a handful of monolithic corporate […]

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Hip Hops: A few Czechoslovak lagers at Mamut in Bratislava (1991)

Today’s post is adapted from a vignette previously published as part of my “40 Years in Beer” series. Because writers enjoy being read, links to my web site will continue to be featured here, as with yesterday’s installment: 40 Years in Beer, Part 80: Running Gravity Head’s daunting gauntlet (Act I: 1999 – 2009). Once […]

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Hip Hops: Rose Hill Lager Haus, because lager is a way of THINKING about beer

Kindly be reminded that the Summer 2025 (Vol. 86) issue of Food & Dining Magazine is currently available in all the familiar places: Louisville area eateries and food shops, newsstands and online. You can subscribe to our award-winning print publication and have it delivered to your door each issue, or read it at issuu (above).  […]

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Hip Hops: It’s all about the beer (and at least 43 years drinking it)

I like baseball. It suits meandering conversation over beer and sausages, without the alarming incidence of brain injuries suffered by football players, although I usually deign to watch the Stupor Bowl in order to properly criticize the idiotic advertisements. It is instructive to document the multitude of ways that we as Americans have lost our […]

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Hip Hops: One fine day at the Augustiner Bräustübel in Salzburg, Austria

In 2003 I  took a 27-day bicycling holiday in Germany and Austria, starting all by myself and later meeting up with good friends. The ride began a few miles from Frankfurt, following various cycling routes to Vienna, roughly a 500-mile trip. A majority of the paths were dedicated to bicycles alone, and most of them […]

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Hip Hops: Wernesgrüner Pils, a fine beer on a budget (at Aldi)

Today, a truncated “Hip Hops.” Worry not; I’ve grown no less wordy in my dotage, but the time demanded by undertaking to write an actual book, and simultaneously working on two book-length (internet only) projects, suggests a rigorously disciplined use of my time. And … if you know me, it should be obvious that discipline isn’t […]

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Rollin’ on the River Craft Beer Festival, in Jeffersonville, Sat., June 7

One week from today will be the second annual edition of Rollin’ on the River Craft Beer Festival, which will take place on Saturday, June 7 from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (2:00 p.m. entry for VIP ticket holders) at the Howard Steamboat Museum at 1101 East Market St. in Jeffersonville, Indiana. The craft beer experts […]

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Hip Hops: Count me as a beer classicist, but not a beer classist

In a former polemical life, and at a different portal than this one, I authored an occasional column called Shane’s Excellent New Words. The basic premise: “Because for some of us, words mean more than money.” Specifically, the concept was aimed squarely at its namesake, a local consigliere who liked to joke in the fashion of […]

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Hip Hops: Blind taste tests dispense with purely visual beer (label) adulation

As a prelude to the following (originally published on Oct 19, 2022), kindly note that the columnist is returning to stand-up (beer ed, not comedy) at Harbor & Hops (3010 Gottbrath Parkway, Jeffersonville) on Monday, May 26. We’re hoping to hold this sort of event on a semi-regular basis. Thanks to Greg Brown for opportunity […]

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