Owing to the subject matter, this “Hip Hops” column supplants the usual Sunday slot for “Edibles & Potables.”
You may have heard the news that Monnik Beer Co. (Schnizelburg’s oldest brewery) will be moving into the space recently vacated by Pivot Brewing Co. at 1753 Bardstown Road in the Bonnycastle/Deer Park neighborhood.
BUT … as Michael L. Jones reported last week at Louisville Business First, this will not be another branch of the same known Monnik, as was attempted unsuccessfully in New Albany a few years back.
Rather, it is to be an entirely new concept, as yet unrevealed. This means that onlookers from a distance (like me) are free to speculate wildly without just cause about what will be materializing.
Well, it’s my pleasure. All I have are these memories, and I know this proposal is unlikely, but …
Assuming this new concept involves Monnik’s house-brewed beer, which of brewer Buddy McHagan’s creations might be gathered together and arranged to inspire a conceptual spin-off, as opposed to a satellite taphouse with karaoke?
Monnik’s McHagan brews a great many styles of beer on an annual basis, including British (Churchill Best), Belgian (Eagle Skull) and American “craft” (IPA) beers. These are ales, but lagers like Hauck’s American Pilsner and Italian Disco also are staples, with seasonals lagers like Kaiser von Schnitzelburg appearing when appropriate (read: right about now).
During the past decade it has become obvious that the metropolitan Louisville area has reached a sort of cumulative tipping point with respect to Oktoberfest-themed events. Every barber shop, quick oil change, church choir and county jail caterer is doing an Oktoberfest celebration, the sum total of which suggests a new norm: Oktoberfest is just another occasion for adults to dress-up like it’s Halloween.
But I quite enjoy the seasonal Märzen, even wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, as though I were an actual American absent the pretending gene.
Anyway, for me the most under-valued portion of Monnik’s brewing portfolio is its Central European lineup, including the preceding lagers as well as other German and Czech beers.
In recent years the latter have at last become acknowledged in America, and McHagan does a fine job with lagers like his periodic 12P Dark Czech Lager.
For the rundown of Czech beer styles, visit this page at the Beer Judge Certification Program’s web site.
Czech lagers are traditionally made with decoction mashes (often double decoction), even with modern malts, while most modern German lagers are made with infusion or step infusion mashes. These differences characterize the richness, mouthfeel, and flavor profile that distinguishes Czech lagers.
So, what do we have? The search for a new concept (preferably one not currently saturated), showcasing under-valued (and very good) house beers, and surely without a full-scale kitchen, but maybe simple snacks.
The answer is a small taproom-meets-hospoda.
In the Czech Republic, a hospoda is a tavern or inn, maybe offering larger meals, although most often beer snacks. One tasty delight that would be easy to establish as the cornerstone of a local hospoda is stinky beer cheese with lots of bread that isn’t bleached white.
The Czech Beer Cheese (or Pivní Sýr), at Prague Morning.
The beer cheese you get at Czech restaurants is served sliced, sitting on a large plate surrounded with little piles of butter, onions, sardines, mustard, paprika, and black pepper along with a shot of black beer. Before eating, mash them all up with a fork, together with a splash of beer from your glass, and then spread the mixture on rye bread.
I’ve had the good fortune of eating characterful beer cheese in several Prague taverns where this menu item would begin ticking the olfactory receptors at least a block from the tavern’s entrance. It seldom gets better.
In a larger sense, we’re looking here for foodstuffs that could be prepped elsewhere and brought to the hospoda for quick, low stress heating and plating: think cheese, ham and sausages, as well as room temperature pickled eggs and vegetables.
Something for your beer? 5 Czech beer snacks and great places to try them, by Marcus Bradshaw (expats cz)
It’s not substantial enough to be a meal in itself, but it’s large enough to satisfy immediate hunger, and stop the beer from going straight to your head. Here’s our pick of five beer snacks.
If it’s possible to have a crock pot of goulash soup behind the bar (the health department is eager to rule), all the better.
Czech beer, Czech snacks; they’re wonderful, and no one else does it ’round here. Louisville has 4,598 places to get a taco, but nary an ounce of stinky beer cheese. And before anyone else says it, yes, I know how ridiculously easy it is to present suggestions when I’m not the financier.
But having been aged out of direct participation and kicked upstairs to color commentary, I’m obliged to sift through all the options and tout the ones that make me the happiest, given that it’s been too damn long since I visited the Czech Republic.
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Previously at “Hip Hops”: From the way-back machine, all the way to the time when the communists had a very good idea, which of course conflicted with capitalist notions of planned obsolescence.
Hip Hops: That chair, those unbreakable commie glasses, cask ale and the craft beer hall of fame
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 
