Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 43: Facing the music at Rich O’s in 1992.
By the late summer of 1992, a routine had settled into place at Rich O’s BBQ, shortly to become a Public House, and the predecessor of today’s New Albanian Brewing Company.
Amy worked mostly from the kitchen, concentrating on solidifying her BBQ menu, while Sportstime’s pizza remained available on both “sides” (dining areas) of the business. I mostly waited tables at Rich O’s and poured beers, although there was no bartender in the familiar sense, and perhaps this requires an explanation.
The haphazard evolution of our pub business resulted in the scattershot addition of keg boxes, walk-ins, serving tanks and (for a while) even a hand-pull for cask-conditioned ale, resulting in a complete organizational anomaly by prevailing restaurant design and management standards, because servers poured their own beers and conveyed them to guests; three decades later, they still do.
Obviously the two of us had support and assistance from the pizzeria’s employees, and yet at the beginning of my tenure we did the bulk of the daily work ourselves. Meals and beers came straight off the company teat with little attempt to keep track of the profits we were consuming. As owners, we accepted our share of tips for the work we did, although as time passed and we could afford to pay ourselves and others, this changed.
In the interim, there were various creative ways of alchemizing cash to pay our living expenses, including stealing from ourselves. I’m struck by nostalgia, as those were the last days when cash was king, and credit cards accounted for far less than 50% of payments rendered. Good times, indeed.
My objective was to gradually bulk up the beer list, beginning with those brands and their wholesalers with whom I was already familiar from Scoreboard Liquors. As we’ve seen, Guinness was the first draft beer, joined later in 1992 by Carlsberg (which soon went out of circulation and yielded to the newly available Pilsner Urquell in 1993), followed by the “middle tap” (rotating), also in early 1993. Cans were almost unknown for the beers I chose to sell, and so a bottle list slowly evolved.
For so long as I was the part-owner of a pub, my preferred job title of “publican” made perfect sense. Later, when my tenure at NABC concluded and I was working at the Pints&union pub in New Albany (2018-23), available descriptions for what I was doing didn’t seem to fit, even though my tasks were largely the same as before.
In essence, for roughly 33 years, whether at NABC or P&u, I decided which beers my workplace would be selling, as drawn from the beers made available to us by wholesalers, and when applicable, foraging elsewhere – subject to requisite legalities, of course, except when I elected to evade them. All the while, nipping at my heels like a misbegotten Greek chorus, came chants from the background.
Them: Roger, you must sell Bud Light/Zima/Silver Bullet whether you like it or not.
Me: No, I sure as $%@! do not need to do that.
I ordered beers and stocked them; maintained contacts with wholesalers and importers; bought appropriate glassware; ensured the draft lines were kept clean (in Indiana, it’s the responsibility of wholesalers, but one must always monitor them); organized promotions like beer dinners and events; and in short, inflicted my intrinsic ideas about beeriness on an unsuspecting outside world.
(Consistent gross beer sales of 40% or higher weren’t enough to maintain my position at Pints&union, but that’s a story of regrettable ageism best reserved for another day. Overall, I had a lengthy, fruitful career run.)
What was I if not a publican?
Surely some sort of beer manager, director, programmer, whisperer or storyteller – albeit not the one to answer questions about homebrewing, which were referred to the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. club. The many intricacies of the brewing process elude me to this very day, although they’ve never precluded a well-told tale.
Eventually I decided that “beer guy” was as good as any other way of conveying what I was doing, and left it at that.
—
As the decade of the 1990s progressed, I came to refer to the significance of the Rich O’s difference as our being host to a bona fide “beer program,” a term I might have coined, although surely it was already in use somewhere before I seized it.
Fundamentally, “beer program” was (and remains) a statement of organizational and philosophical intent, meaning that first and foremost we regarded beer to be of sufficient importance to serve as a core business focus, also implying that we were fully educated about the range of possibilities, capable of arranging our beer selections thematically (by style, country or origin or sheer serendipity), and aiming for excellence even if perfection always will remain an unattainable ideal.
For as long as I can remember, numerous Louisville-area restaurants pursued such “programming” notions as they pertained to wine and spirits, but beer programs were thin on the ground during the early 1990s, and so were people who understood squat about beer, which handily explains the disparity.
Even if I hadn’t already been passionate about better beer, the whole idea of stressing it jibed wonderfully with the only strategic small business principle that ever really appealed to me: Strive to lessen potential competition by picking a niche, become very good at the details and execution, then watch as people come to you.
Wine continues to be a useful analogy. The American wine sector started wising up, as opposed to dumbing down, when I was just a kid. I’ve tried in vain to find an article I read many years ago, which explained a utilitarian understanding among America’s big wine interests to the effect that a marketing strategy would be collectively pursued positioning wine as the ancient, respectable beverage of moderation, ideal for enjoyment with food, and a universal symbol of thoughtful, civilized, upwardly mobile consumers (never forget that beer lovers borrowed the word “snob” from wine lovers).
The wine lobby would do nothing to lessen the prospects for the makers of Thunderbird and MD 20-20, which could remain symbolic of downtrodden, homeless alcoholics (and, yes, a vague semblance of wine was involved in producing them), but overall, vino would be relentlessly boosted upmarket during the 1960s, 70s and beyond.
The initial response of America’s industrial beer manufacturers was predictably pegged to their native habitat: The deepest depths of the lowest common denominator.
“LOOK!” they screamed, “it’s the Swedish Bikini Team with ICE COLD and DIRT CHEAP 30-packs!”
During the 1980s and 90s, those of us seeking to alter the dynamic of this beer-wine equation found that wine drinkers had almost always attained at least a bluffer’s knowledge of Grapes 101. They generally knew the difference between reds and whites, and understood the importance of terroir.
Meanwhile, the average American beer drinker still thought Bock beer came from annual vat scrubbings (if they’d heard the German word at all), was utterly terrified of the dark, and when there was a discussion about beer that probed cautiously beyond the merits of flavor as defined by absence (it’s not bitter or heavy or tasting too much like beer), these centered almost entirely on temperature and price.
In short, the prevailing notion of beer was resolutely down-market. We proposed to lift it, ever mindful of the myth of Sisyphus.
—
The term teaching method is defined as “the general principles, pedagogy and management strategies used for classroom instruction.”
It seems reasonable to assume that there is a method to any instruction, whether located in a classroom or at home before we ever start school. Although my mother was a teacher and I pretended to be one while in Košice, it isn’t something I’d thought about very often in 1992.
Did I have a teaching method for beer? There weren’t many “classrooms” until the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) and Cicerone regimens came along. In the 1980s, we made it up as we went along, and by 1992, I probably occupied a higher-than-average middle ground – far exceeding the norm and not yet approaching comprehensive. I told stories, and kept drinking to make sure my words matched the flavors.
My knowledge about beer was neither comprehensive nor deficient. There were things I knew, and other parts I needed to learn. As an example, there was draft beer as a technical construct.
Sportstime Pizza originally had Budweiser and Miller Lite on tap. These beers came to us from two different wholesalers, but in standard American kegs, which were straight-sided, 15.5 gallon, stainless steel vessels with Sankey couplers, as tapped from the kitchen walk-in. Back-up kegs could be stored there, too, along with all the food (it was very cramped in there). The CO2 necessary to push the beer teed off from large tank that also fed the fountain soft drink unit.
It turns out that there’s a reason for standardization. It removes the need to think, which is why most of the planet measures in kilometers even if we insist on miles. Once the keg box was installed at Rich O’s, tapping tactics became more complicated. Couplers and keg sizes varied among imported beers. Guinness required mixed CO2 and nitrogen gas; who was the supplier, and where would we put the tank?
At first we tried pushing the other two draft beers with mixed Guinness gas, theorizing that the mouth feel would be softer, and it may have been, except it didn’t work well.
The pre-mixed 25% CO2/75% N gas ratio is appropriate for nitro stout beers. However, when applied to ales and lagers, the beer will go flat because the partial pressure of CO2 from the blend needs to be higher.
Oops. No one told me, and I never considered asking. After a few months of always losing the last few flat pints from a keg, we carved out a space by the keg box, connected the non-Guinness faucets to a canister of straight CO2, and stopped talking about our revolutionary innovation. Mind you, in due time there’d be gadgets for blending gases and producing precisely the sort of pour that I thought would come from snapping my fingers while in a state of abject ignorance.
We live and we learn, and then there’s the challenge of glassware.
The K&H Café in Lanesville always poured Budweiser into Mason jars. Sportstime used iced tea glasses. Both establishments had glass chillers, because of course Americans preferred the coldest beer in town (because it helps to mute the flavor). To do Guinness correctly, it required signature glasses: Imperial pints (19.2 oz) as opposed to 12 or 16 oz.
Concurrently beers of higher alcohol content needed smaller glasses. I’d traveled enough to know that there were all sorts of glasses, and if one intended to be authentic, they definitely were a consideration. However, it got real when the time came to source them. Remember, it was 1992. Sometimes we got what we wanted, other times not. In the meantime, our customers usually were happy to experience what beer choice was all about, and forgave us our missteps.
Still, it broke my heart to pour a good beer into an iced tea glass, irrespective of how “cool” some might regard it.
As for the choice of beers, imports from Europe were still the name of the game for anyone seeking diversity. Not only would it be a few years before the scales tipped in favor of American-made “microbrews” – remember, Louisville wasn’t Boulder or Boston, even if the Silo brewpub was preparing to open in October of ‘92 – but my personal fixation remained Europe, right where it had always been, and my teaching method reflected it.
We continued to serve mass-market American lager on the Sportstime side, priced as it always had been. However at Rich O’s, I concluded that direct economic sanctions were the best way to ease guests from their stodgy comfort zones into a flight path aimed at higher ground.
Consequently Bud, Miller Lite and the like steadily escalated in price at Rich O’s, topping out at $8.50 a bottle, as opposed to two bucks-something at Sportstime. The Lite-Free Zone, which excluded low-calorie lagers from Rich O’s, came into existence in 1994, and when NABC began brewing in 2002, all the mass-market beers left the building for good.
I consider these acts of “swill cleansing” to be one of my greatest achievements, even if there has been a wee bit of odious PBR backsliding at NABC since I departed the business.
But things like that can’t be helped, can they?
—
Tuesday, November 3, 1992 was an American presidential election, revealing the extent to which, in a few short months, Rich O’s already had become an Indiana University Southeast faculty hangout. In the beginning the students seemed to prefer the pizzeria, but eventually patronage patterns evened out.
The occasion called for a good, old-fashioned election returns watch party.
After two Ray-Gun terms and four years of Pappy Bush, the results placed Bill Clinton in the White House. Rich O’s was packed with regulars, the majority of whom fell on the left of the aisle like me, and who were gleeful at the prospect of a Democrat winning. None of us was Nostradamus, and the many problematic aspects of Clintonesque triangulation were still further down the road.
We stayed there until the wee hours, drinking beer and listening to music. Right there, in that exact moment of celebrating the election returns with friends, it felt like everything was jelling. Pubs and barrooms were my happy places, and I loved selling beer. The sheer contrarianism of selling better beer at a time when so few others grasped it was proving even more enjoyable.
Outside our niche there was a huge “untapped” beer market comprised of the uninformed and uninitiated, who consequently were ripe for conversion whether they knew it yet, or not. I had stumbled into better beer, and better beer was the perfect example of a growth market.
And, without ever realizing it, I was in the process of creating a job description out of thin air. Given that I didn’t always know what I was doing, and local resources to ask for help were largely non-existent, survival required faking it until the hurdles were cleared. Unsurprisingly, improvisation was the watchword, and in spite of myself, gradually I was learning how a pub dedicated to beer might be operated.
The period of time from 1992 through 2009 (the year when Bank Street Brewhouse launched) was very successful for me professionally, both in terms of beer business ventures and the larger cause of micro/craft beer advancement nationally.
The flip side? My emerging beer-centered skill set was so cantankerously individualistic that replicating it, or parlaying the experience as justification to take my talents to South Beach and reap windfall profits, wasn’t really likely. The structure of a team or group setting was something I genuinely needed, and yet being the front man (however reluctantly at first) steered me inexorably toward the equivalent of a solo album.
In the beginning, these contradictions seemed manageable, in spite of my propensity to worry. I’d never worked for myself, ever before. It wasn’t long before the self-questioning began: Would I be able to work for anyone else, ever again?
In retrospect, groping forward professionally was inseparable from finally finding my voice, learning to speak, and understanding what it took to sidestep lifelong, debilitating shyness and the concurrent, unwelcomed visitations by the black dog.
Alas, it never dawned on me that there can be unanticipated consequences to any such achievement. Being tongue-tied may have been frustrating, but it could be a comfy refuge, too, except that it transpired that I had things to say, and suddenly people I didn’t even know were listening to me.
This was surprising and confusing, especially when the responses came from women who were not my girlfriend and business partner; this was unprecedented, and capable of landing me in purgatory or paradise, and often both places at once. For these reasons, which I must and do own, as well as many others beyond my control, the 1990s were destined to play out much like an alternative food and drink universe’s “Behind the Music” documentary outtake featuring Fleetwood Mac – without the cocaine.
I’m forever slow to learn and late to bloom, and as far as my inner world was concerned, coming into my own brought upheavals with it such as I’d never known. The decade was absolute, unremitting gonzo. Work and play were messily intertwined, and adrenaline was both a blessing and a curse; I drank beer to dull my emotions, then drank more beer to summon their return.
There was little time for detachment, self-assessment, or rational thinking about where the train was headed, but I had a ticket to ride, and didn’t bother reading the small print, which cautioned against the pitfalls of hubris.
Meanwhile, in 1993, there’d be a wedding to attend.
Curiously, it was my own. My intentions were good, and I meant well, but it was going to be a bumpy ride.
Cover photo: My friend Lee “Lazlo” Cotner enjoys a refreshing pint, circa 1993.
