(Updated on July 18, 2024)
40 Years in Beer is a memoir of my life and times in the beer business. The first of these serialized installments came into being in 2022, the 40th anniversary of my inaugural shift in 1982 at Scoreboard Liquors in New Albany, Indiana.
Having sadly duped myself into thinking there’d be little to say (from me, really?), two years of writing have passed since then, and in mid-2024 I’ve just now made it to 1994 in the narrative.
This might take a while.
Not only that, but apart from writing about beer, I’m not even directly involved in the beer biz at the present time, having lost my most recent beer programming gig at Pints&union in November, 2023.
But writing about beer counts, too.
Below you’ll find the numerical listing of installments (from #1 to the most recent), preceded by the short-term schedule of what’s in the hopper.
As ever, thanks for reading. Thoughts? Corrections? Please write me at mayorbaylor(at)gmail(dot)com. Comments have been disabled for this series not because I don’t want them, but owing to my mom ‘n’ pop web server’s security needs; apparently we’re constantly under attack from bots in Kazakhstan.
Current series word count: 129,103.
COMING NEXT (PARTS 53 – 57)
(07/22/2024) 53: The birth of Samichlaus at Zürich’s classic Brauerei Hürlimann (1994).
Learning about the Samichlaus brewing method in its original habitat was incredible, but the real story, beginning in the early 1990s when the fall of Communism opened European markets for global “modernity,” was the death of Hürlimann and so many other traditional breweries of its ilk. Whenever a brewery like Hürlimann goes away, so does an entire, interrelated system, both inside the brewhouse and also outside of it, in the surrounding community.
(07/29/2024) 54: New Albanians on holiday in Old Albania (1994).
Yes, there was beer in Albania. As we enjoyed the contrasts in temperature between the frigid lagering cellar and the sunbaked streets outside, the brewmaster’s assistant at Birra Tirana tapped off some two-week old, unfiltered “Hoxha’s Best” and proudly offered glasses to each of us. It was crisp and nicely defined, and tastier than most of the Italian imports on sale in Albania.
(08/05/2024) 55: Cerveza in the afternoon at Pamplona’s Fiesta de San Fermin (1994).
San Fermin’s strain of craziness is a fascinating hybrid. Spectacular public displays of orgiastic, besotted and scatological indecency occur alongside demonstrations of a proud and dignified adherence to traditional...Read more
