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 various threads, and as such, football is an overblown gift that never stops giving.
Returning to baseball as a more relaxing and conducive frame of reference, I’ll freely admit that my philosophy of writing “Hip Hops” columns eschews contact hitting. Rather, I swing for the fences, and when trying to hit home runs, one must accept a greater incidence of strikeouts.
What I should be doing from week to week is documenting the life and times of Louisville-area breweries in the narrow sense of the beers they brew. The rest of it is utterly superfluous, by which I mean all the bells and whistles tunelessly deployed on a daily basis to promote brewery tap rooms to people who have no intention of drinking beer.
As this pertains to social media feeds, finding information about the beer has become tantamount to locating a needle in yonder haystack. And yet the biggest expense for more brewery start-ups is for the equipment needed to brew, package and pour beers that are crafted on-site (not to mention brew team payroll), which in turn constitutes the unique difference between breweries (not karaoke nights or Mimosa Mondays).
Why, then, does it seem that promoting one’s own house-brewed beer is a last resort? It gets even worse when breweries and their employees, up to (and including) owners, take to singing the praises of mass-market American pet shampoo like High Life and Banquet. YOU MAKE YOUR OWN BEER, for chrissakes. Why shill for the dreck that prompted the revolution that placed a mash tun, brew kettle and fermenters in the back room?
Doing so contradicts a brewery’s entire reason for existence, and yes, I admit to advanced age, crustiness and an accompanying cynicism. But in fairness, I also felt this way when I was 30, not 65. I may be a butthole, although you can’t accuse me of inconsistency.
Trust me, I understand that beer writing always has been a niche pursuit, even during craft beer’s salad days (and be aware that I insist on anchovies with my Caesar). We now live in a post-literate (lipstick effect) little treat culture, and there’s nothing “Hip Hops” can do to change that. It remains my aim to write for those who still read, and I’ll continue down this path.
However, as the year progresses, I’ll try to visit as many Louisville-area breweries as I can, sip a bit, and see if the conversation might be shifted back to the liquid in what I’m hoping are not shaker pint glasses.
Seriously, it’s all about the beer. Or at least, it should be.
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My “40 Years in Beer” series (as of 2025, it’s 43 years) took an unplanned hiatus during the past six weeks, primarily because John Lennon was right, and life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans (like a visit to Palma, Mallorca in October).
Allow me to respectfully draw your attention to yesterday’s installment. It has been an extremely difficult and emotional past two months for NABC Nation, which of course was my previous beer life’s work from 1989 – 2018.
79: Stuck in a moment (and you can’t get out of it)
On May 13, 2025 NABC’s Jeff “Professional Manager of a really good team of slackers” Lewison died after a short illness at the age of 50, and on May 29, Russell “Roz” Tate (the Norm Peterson of NABC) died unexpectedly at the age of 64. I concede from the outset that whatever powers of perception I’m usually able to muster as a writer are failing me as I’ve sought the proper words to remember Jeff and Roz. Consequently, I’m relying heavily on the testimony of others. Emotions are raw, and their absences are huge gaps in the fabric of NABC’s extended family.
Rest in peace, Jeff and Roz.
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As for the narrative, that’s right: 232,147 words, and I’m not yet to the year 2000 (the compendium is here), but as my pal Marcel Proust once remarked, “whatever; take as long as you like.” The following links and capsules play catch-up. The next chapter likely will be the story of how Gravity Head came to be in 1999.
As always, thanks for reading.
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78: We just had to get to Merry Old England (1998).
Summer 1998 (2): From the French Alps, the Chunnel beckoned. With stops in London, Cambridge and Brighton, I was offered opportunities to closely examine cask-conditioned ale, often referred to as “real ale” — old-fashioned, unpasteurized and absent the forced-pressure C02 systems to which the world has grown accustomed, but naturally carbonated in the firkin (the “cask”) by means of a secondary fermentation.
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77: A “tight” 1998 European summer (San Fermin & the French Alps).
My cousin Don Barry and his pals — not to mention those poor lonely bulls — desperately needed me to join them in Basque Country for the Fiesta de San Fermin. We’d head toward Pamplona from the south of France in early July, later working our way to London via the French Alps and Paris.
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76: A boy can dream – about beercycling (and a requiem for Moose).
My early introduction to bicycles as a child was followed by a long car-centric hiatus, then belated and mutually reinforcing resumptions, repetitive daily increments, a Trek to the Deck, glorious European beercycling jaunts, the premature death of a dear friend, and another lengthy period of dusty inactivity. As my 65th birthday nears, is beercycling beckoning yet again?
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75: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999)
Russia in the summer of 1999 was experiencing an interregnum of sorts, with President Boris Yeltsin resigning office only a few months later, to be replaced by a little known former Dresden resident and fan of Radeberger Pilsner named Vladimir Putin. Barrie and I visited with Allan and Kim W., caught a glimpse of Moscow, boated and drank beer in the countryside, then wound our way to Copenhagen for three days of epic eating and drinking.
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Cover photo: Toasting the late, great Roz Tate (seated, rear) at NABC with a Bob’s Old 15-B Porter in 2022.
Previously at Hip Hops:
Hip Hops: One fine day at the Augustiner Bräustübel in Salzburg, Austria
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 
