Many months ago it dawned on me that the Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America event would be in Indianapolis this year. It officially concluded on May Day, but the after-parties continue.
Admittedly I trolled the CBC on social media and felt great delight, both in seeing people I know (even if I haven’t seen many of them for a while), and moreover, knowing that Indianapolis had taken its turn.
Hosting the CBC is something we discussed often during my tenure on the Brewers of Indiana Guild (2009 – 2016), and I’m gratified to see the conference come to fruition. Indianapolis is a convention and big-ticket event kind of town, and kudos to the planners.
When it came down to deciding whether I’d attend, which I probably should have given that I’m writing a book about beer, and Indianapolis is such a short drive from New Albany, I’ve seldom felt as conflicted. It was actually agonizing.
While my NABC buyout wasn’t final until 2018, I began the process of pulling away in 2015, so it has been ten years. You’ll get the full blow-by-blow narrative at an as yet undisclosed juncture in the “40 Years in Beer” narrative, but it will suffice to say that it was time for me to go, because my continued presence in the company I helped to build wasn’t sustainable any longer.
I never doubted the wisdom or timing of departure. When the moment comes, it comes, and by my own criteria (not anyone else’s), the point had arrived when I was powerless in my own milieu. Bank Street Brewhouse was almost entirely my idea, and although it was successful artistically, it wasn’t in terms of profit and loss. Someone had to take responsibility, and in essence, I fired myself.
Trust me; it’s true.
Doing so cost me dearly in terms of dollars and cents; NABC was to have been my retirement, and I cashed out for pennies on the dollar. I lost around $200,000 of my own and my family’s money. I’ve made my peace with it, mostly. Otherwise, I’d still be drinking too much. Native Hoosier novelist Kurt Vonnegut has never been as quotable as right now.
“So it goes.”
In 2016 and 2017, I started trying to recover whatever self-identity I still possessed after more than two decades spent tying myself to the business of beer. The advent of Pints&union in 2018 helped in this process, at least in the beginning.
Someone else could be...Read more
