Hi, I’m Roger, an erstwhile “beer guy” charged with holding down this digital fort in quiet desperation, or something like that (the metaphors flow like craft cocktail programs in frantic times like these).
Today is not customarily “Hip Hops” day, but I drink the pint I’m dealt/handed/poured, which comes to me from Amanda Hancock at the Courier Journal: New Louisville brew pub pouring lots of lagers to open soon from Monnik team: What to know.
The dimmed sign for Pivot Brewing still hangs outside its former Bardstown Road address, but the inside has been quietly transforming for months. Shortly after the craft brewery and cidery ceased operations in Aug. 2024, the prime Highlands spot was scooped up by the team behind Germantown’s Monnik Beer Company.
Since then, the space has been shaping up to be “a cozy, welcoming pub” that’s purposely not Monnik 2.0, owner-operator Brian Holton told the Courier Journal. The result is Rose Hill Lager Haus, which should open at 1753 Bardstown Road in February, Holton said.
As its name suggests, this brew pub is all about lagers. And a whole bunch of them. Holton estimates 75% of what’s on tap will be from the lager family, highlighting a trend in the craft beer world toward lighter brews.
The bold text is mine, a teaching point necessitating this correction:
Just because it’s a lager does not imply that it is light in flavor, color or alcohol content.
The existence of styles like Dunkel, Bock, Doppelbock and even Baltic Porter (which can be brewed using lager yeast, and often is) points to the misperception of lager as “light.”
Granted, Americans have experienced long and stifling decades of ever-diminished lager character, until “beer” is often indistinguishable from odious hard seltzer. But that’s why the craft beer revolution occurred in the first place, and as all of this pertains to Monnik’s project in the Highlands, for once the capital letters are justified.
I TOLD YA SO.
To be sure, Monnik will NOT be operating Rose Hill Lager Haus exactly as I suggested in my column from last September, which is reprinted here. Not once did I speak to anyone from Monnik.
I just know that Buddy McHagan brews superlative lagers, and the rest seemed elementary. Stinky Czech beer cheese? I’d still be there for some of that, but dreams deferred comprise the story of my life. A mug of 12P, prosím.
(Cover photo: Classic lagering cellars at the Budvar brewery in the Czech Republic, 1997.)
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Hip Hops: Dear Monnik … look to the Czech Lands for a Highlands hospoda
September 8, 2024
You may have heard the news that Monnik Beer Co. (Schnitzelburg’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?
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.
Previously at “Hip Hops”:
Hip Hops: San Francisco’s Toronado beer bar at the crossroads
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 
