Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 60: Those glorious Belgian beer cafes (Euro Beer Travel 1995, Part III)
Beer writer Michael Jackson’s visit to Louisville on November 19, 1994 began at Bluegrass Brewing Company and concluded at Rich O’s Public House. Between these stops, Jackson dropped by the Silo Microbrewery. A small crowd of local beer aficionados followed him from place to place, and the mood was one of unreserved euphoria.
- 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 56: Michael Jackson’s 1994 visit to Louisville — BBC, the Silo, Rich O’s
- 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 57: Beer writer Michael Jackson’s reaction to the Red Room at the Public House (1994)
Then, just five days later, Courier-Journal reporter David McGinty saw to it that our post-Jackson buzzes were considerably dampened: “The Silo Microbrewery, at 630 Barret Ave., has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The filing by the corporation that owns the microbrewery and restaurant lists about 130 creditors and says the business owes the 20 largest unsecured creditors a total of about $95,000.”
People liked to compare, and I was one of them, but speculation about the relative merits of the Silo versus Bluegrass Brewing never mattered nearly as much as the realization that the Louisville metropolitan area was capable of supporting more than one or two craft breweries. The vexing question was how this growth might be encouraged over the long term.
David Barhorst’s tragi-comic scheme to revive Oertel’s Brewing Co. at the short-lived Pegasus Restaurant in Butchertown predictably played out as farce, and by all rights it should have taught all of us valuable lessons about root and branch priorities. Unfortunately, the propensity of the Silo’s ownership group to shoot its frail creation in the foot explains why the entity never seemed to find firm footing.
A default level of ingrained incomprehension on the part of the Silo’s ownership was evident from the start. Frustrated by it (and with better prospects at Bluegrass Brewing Co.), David Pierce left the Silo’s brewhouse for BBC in 1993 after only a year aboard. David was replaced by Eileen Martin, with the late Matt “Brew Boy” Gould working as her assistant, and the quality of the Silo’s beer was assured, but she resigned in early 1995 for reasons similar to David’s.
“Ale-leen” then embarked upon a lengthy career in beer, finding success at all levels of the beer business before returning to brewing at Browning’s, circa 2002. Matt moved to BBC to work for David, then opened Cumberland Brews in 2000. That’s how David, Eileen and Matt built the foundations for craft brewing in Louisville.
Considering their common experience at the Silo, they also observed a simple truth that consistently eluded the Silo’s ownership group, because while having a pot of money to invest in a microbrewery or brewpub is necessary, and might even impress former classmates at the 25-year class reunion, it was equally essential for these investors to understand that deeply-rooted conceptual and philosophical differences clearly existed between the delicate act of building a local brewery from the ground up, and conversely, acquiring a cookie-cutter Bennigan’s, Chili’s or Max and Erma’s franchise, to be planted in a suburban pasture by an interstate exit somewhere that once accommodated corn and soybeans.
Which is to say that these many years later, I’m still plenty annoyed with the Silo’s owners for botching their brewing opportunity so thoroughly. Combined with Barhorst’s serial impotence, I believe Louisville’s progress in brewing was held back for years owing to their examples, and if you (or they) don’t agree with me, you’re free to go and write your own fucking book.
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At this juncture, kindly allow me to remind readers that the first Louisville brewery to win a Great American Beer Festival medal was NOT Bluegrass Brewing Company, as might be assumed.
GABF Herb, Spice 1993
GOLD: Celis White – Celis Brewery, Inc., Austin, TX
SILVER: Yuletide Ale – Silo Brewpub, Louisville, KY
BRONZE: Our Special Ale – Anchor Brewing Co., San Francisco, CA
That’s right. Yuletide Ale was the first, sandwiched between two very heavy hitters. Eileen was Silo’s brewer of record in 1993, with the GABF submission coming from David’s formulation the previous year; he took the idea with him to Bluegrass Brewing Company, where it formed the basis of BBC’s annual holiday seasonal, Ebenezer Ale.
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Circling back to C-J reporter McGinty, he wouldn’t have known exactly how to question someone like Fred Radcliffe Jr., head of the Silo’s ownership group, and if Radcliffe couldn’t fathom the foundational implications of the brewing business he’d launched, it certainly wasn’t the reporter’s job to instruct him.
Ironically, Radcliffe was quite happy to provide McGinty with testimony, albeit inadvertent, explaining his tilt-a-whirl managerial approach.
“Radcliffe said the Silo, which opened in October 1992, originally appealed to a 30s-and-older crowd and initially was very successful. But when patronage from that crowd began to fall off, he said, the business began to make a pitch to younger people. That pitch has not been successful, he said, and at the first of the year the Silo will begin booking bands and holding promotions geared to the original, older clientele.”
As always, not a single word about the Silo’s beer. One wonders whether Radcliffe ever actually tasted the beer he spent so much to have brewed so that he could push Bud Light.
It should be noted that from time immemorial, “a pitch to younger people” by food and drink operators translates as an immediate and vigorous dumbing down of the offerings (c’mon, ditch the fancy French chicken breast recipe and load up on boneless wings) and doubling down on trendy booze-based soda pop specials (Jello shots and ice cold longnecks during happy hour, y’all – hey, I hear Boone’s Farm Kumquat Idyll is killing it on campus these days).
But hadn’t Radcliffe invested heavily in machines that made beer? When house beer was consumed on the premises, the middleman was omitted, and the profit margins were rendered pleasingly high. Moreover, the start-up costs of these beer-making machines required a consistent level of production at or near capacity. When the machines are idle, or used only half the time, the bottom line read “tilt.”
Consequently, Radcliffe’s primary job was brewing and vending as much of his own higher-margin beer as humanly possible, and not searching far and wide for liquid competitors to divert attention from his own beer-making machines. As such, losing interest in the 30-and-older crowd in favor of pandering to a younger demographic – broadly speaking, the one less likely to be loyal, and not as well-heeled financially – could only hurt the Silo’s house beer sales and Radcliffe’s pocketbook. Later in the beer revolution there’d be a few college-aged craft beer fans, but in 1995, the target was older. Like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders, the Silo’s owner continually acted contrary to his self-interest.
The older demographic that Radcliffe acknowledged his failure to maintain took a bit more care and cajoling to snag, but once hooked, it was more likely to be loyal. The chances of becoming enamored of a product like craft beer were enhanced by education, travel and life experience; the 30+ crowd claimed these, in addition to its higher disposable income. These factors were true in 1994, and remain so today.
And Radcliffe’s plan? Please the kids with ice cold swill, book more deafening bands, preclude adult conversation, ignore craft beer’s upmarket potential and promote televised sports at the bar. I wouldn’t doubt that the Silo stocked Zima; verily, you can’t make this stuff up.
At any rate, the bankruptcy avoidance plan of late 1994 was duly implemented, and the Silo limped tepidly into 1995 with ever-diminishing returns, settling at the bottom of the sea by mid-summer. Rumors of a revival began almost immediately, and by year’s end a successor was in place. To explain, following is an article I wrote for Walking the Dog in December, 1995 (lightly edited and a few redundancies excised), in which I used the occasion of Louisiana Jack’s at the Silo to close accounts with the Radcliffe occupancy.
Pay close attention to Michael Jackson’s quoted passages. The degree to which I have internalized the great man’s words comes as a surprise, even to me, and I’ve been repeating variants of his thoughts ever since.
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Silo’s Return: Wishing Them Well, But Asking a Few Tough Questions (Dec. 1995)
As I am completing this issue of Walking the Dog, a remodeled Silo brewpub is reopening. As Yogi Berra is reputed to have said, it is deja vu all over again.
When the Silo opened in 1992, it symbolized the arrival of the beer and brewing revolution to Louisville. Then it came to illustrate the many ways this revolution – our revolution – can be perverted, vandalized, gutted and defiled by those who have no understanding of the fundamental principles at its heart.
In short, and as outlined here, the Fred Radcliffe era at the Silo has mercifully come to a close, with the Scentless Brewpub Apprentice returning to the obscurity that his relentless mediocrity so richly ensures; back to asbestos remediation and Jack & Coke, and as far away as humanly possible from craft brewing, where his legacy is best summarized as “How Not to Do It.”
Brian Kolb, who succeeded Eileen Martin following her resignation last spring, has returned as the Silo’s brewmaster (or maybe not; there seems to be some confusion over his exact role – does anyone know Kaz Wolkensperg?) and although Brian will do his best to get the boil rolling, it isn’t certain when the brewpub’s own beers will be ready again.
Until the Silo’s beers come on line, McOldenberg Brewmall will be sold at the Silo. We can only pray that the presence will be short-lived, and that legacy of underachievement won’t infect the revamped Silo.
At this point, a correction is in order. In Walking the Dog #61 & 62 (October/November, 1995), the new ownership and management of the Silo were misidentified. The correct names are as follows: Jack Sedivy and Maria Ladd, managing partners and part owners; Dottie Heady, Tom Bond and Jack Sharpe, part owners/investors; and one unidentified silent partner. According to Business First (Week of October 23, 1995), Sedivy’s and Ladd’s food-service experience includes stints as managers in the now-defunct Grisanti Catering and operators of a restaurant near New York City.
More recently, Sedivy was the chairman of Sullivan College’s Restaurant and Hospitality program, and Ladd ran a food service temporary-work agency called Service with Ease. The other investors and their occupations: Heady, director of Sullivan’s Center for Business and Corporate Training; Bond, retired pharmacist; and Sharpe, franchisee of a My Favorite Muffin shop in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Based on two telephone conversations with Sedivy, a recent news report on WDRB-41 and the testimony of a few Louisville-area restaurant people, it would appear that the Silo is in far better hands this time, at least in terms of its kitchen and its overall management.
Sedivy and Ladd, who are chief among the investors and will be managing the establishment, have extensive food service experience and this bodes well for the Silo’s eatery, which will be known as Louisiana Jack’s. According to Sedivy, the menu will be “Louisiana-style without the “C” word,” which is bizarre but suggests a good fit with whatever beer is eventually brewed at the Silo.
However, most Walking the Dog readers already know many good restaurants exist in the Louisville area, and that only two of these restaurants have a brewery, so what will the new management’s philosophy be with regard to beer?
Assuming he stays on, Brian’s commitment to good beer is sincere and unquestioned, but recognizing that the Radcliffe years prove the ability of inept management to sabotage the best intentions of brewers, we must ask whether the Silo’s new management intends to steer its beer in the direction of Bluegrass Brewing (or Great Lakes, or Sierra Nevada), or if the approach will resemble the predictable “you can go only so far in this market” excuse repeatedly decried by beer writer Michael Jackson during his tour last spring of craft breweries in the Southeast.
Consequently, given the Silo’s comeback beer hasn’t yet been brewed, let’s examine Jackson’s viewpoint. Leading off, a brief excerpt by Sara Doersam from “Letter from the Editor” (Southern Draft Brew News, Dec. ’95/Jan. ’96).
Almost all Southeastern brewers whose beers (Michael) Jackson sampled contend they are forced to brew light-flavored, light-colored, light-bodied beer because their customers demand it. Jackson responds that, while craft breweries may well brew fainthearted beers to satisfy their Joe Sixpack customers, they should brew the majority of their beers for the more sophisticated beer drinkers, those who prefer assertive beers, those who are the trend setters for the brewpubs and microbreweries.
Sara summarizes wonderfully. Considering the pathetic record of the Radcliffe team in aggressively promoting sales of Miller Lite at the expense of the Silo’s house beers, additional testimony by the Beer Hunter himself is merited. We find it in “Michael Jackson Interview, Part 2,” appearing in Celebrator Beer News (in its June/July 1995 issue.
In response to a rather disjointed question about whether the “image” of a brewpub can be damaged when it also holds a liquor license (Jackson disagrees, advocating the rightful place of beer alongside other alcoholic beverages of quality, such as single malt scotch and fine wine), Jackson minces no words about the sort of cowardly capitulation that helped sink the Silo.
I think the biggest threat to the purity of the brewpub image is the brewpub that stocks mainstream American beers. When I see a brewpub that’s full of neons that say “Coor’s Light” and “Miller Genuine Draft,” I see a place that doesn’t know what it’s there for. I think that, on the beer front, brewpubs should either stock only their own or perhaps have guests from other local small breweries. (Conversely) I don’t think beer is ever diluted by the presence of good wine and good spirits…
The interviewer then asks, “Some brewpub operators might counter that, by not having a Bud handle or a Coors handle or a Miller handle, they are jeopardizing their opportunity to have a viable business by denying some of their clientele the beverage of their choice. So your position is that a brewpub really should offer only craft beers and deny an alternative beverage altogether?”
Jackson’s answer must be quoted in its devastatingly accurate entirety.
I understand the thinking, but I think it’s misguided. If you have mainstream American beers there, what you’re saying to the consumer is that the stuff that we make is somehow not real or somehow a bit funny. You’re sending out the wrong message. Nobody is so deformed in their palate that when it really comes to it they can’t drink a lighter-end craft beer. You’ve only got to go into a place like Gordon Biersch (a west coast brewpub at several sites) to see all of these people, many of whom had never touched anything other than a mainstream American beer, quite cheerfully sitting there and drinking a Helles or Marzen beer or a Dunkles, to see that this transition is not as damned hard as people think.
I get bored insensible with brewpub owners telling me, “Ah, yes. We had to tone down our beers because, you see, our town is special. Our town is particularly conservative. It’s all to do with allocation in our part of the country.” I always wonder, when they’re saying that.
First of all, I just get so bored with it, because you could say it about almost every town, with the possible exceptions of San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and perhaps Denver. But all over the country you could make this comment. I think so often it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The brewer never had any real faith in his product in the first place. If he really believed in it, he would have sold it to those people.
Of course, you don’t expect people to come in and start off with an Anchor Liberty or Sam Adams Triple Bock, but you can sell them a lighter handcrafted beer. It’s not really that big a deal. Plenty of people are doing it and there are plenty of places in so-called conservative towns where you go to a microbrewery and you ask “What’s your biggest seller?” The biggest seller turns out not to be the gold, but to be maybe the Irish ale or the IPA or even, in some instances, a genuine Bavarian-style wheat beer. So give the consumer a chance, and don’t apologize to him before he’s even started.
That’s absolutely beautiful.
There’s another important point that involves the attitude of some restaurateurs who become involved in the brewing business and concoct rationalizations to justify the presence of abominations like Miller Lite. Their argument goes something like this:
We’re not just a brewpub and a bar, we’re a restaurant, and there are certain expectations on the part of customers who come to us not for our own beer, but for our food. To please them, we must offer mainstream megabrews, even if these contradict our primary reason for being.
Like Jackson, I find such ill-considered lines of thought boring beyond all patience. Quite simply, the best way to refute the preceding is to ask the restaurant people whether they also feel obliged to offer reheated White Castle hamburgers alongside the burgers cooked in their own kitchen.
Why not? After all, they’re here to please the customers, and certainly there’ll be patrons who prefer White Castles over in-house brewpub burgers, and even if an unparalleled expertise cooking hamburgers is the main thing that sets them apart from other restaurants…
This line of thinking is utterly nonsensical. Few if any self-respecting brewpub owners would sanction such a strategy emanating from their kitchen. Yet they’ll sell Budweiser across the bar and refuse to see the contradiction, with the end result that their establishments are desecrated by hordes of palate-challenged Liteweights, and their credibility is severely compromised.
It’s frustrating that in a general sense, too many brewpub owners and managers have no true, personal interest in beer; for those of us who know better, they too often have little or no interest in learning about the product they’re selling. The knowledge and resources are there, even in a place like Louisville, but these aren’t utilized. It’s a shame, and it is one of the reasons why (as Jackson noted) brewpubs start “apologizing” to consumers before they’ve even taken a seat.
Like poor ol’ Fred Radcliffe.
When Radcliffe decked the Silo’s hall with Miller Genuine Draft paper shamrocks during St. Paddy’s Day, rolled out barrels of iced-down Lite longnecks, and gave his own beer away for a buck, he wasn’t just apologizing to his customers – he was groveling in abject and clueless humiliation, frightened and shaking, pale and chattering knees scraping the hardwood, begging the palate-challenged to ignore the expensive brewing equipment behind the glass and to do anything except come to the Silo for the only thing that separated it from every other Louisville bar/restaurant save one: HOUSE-BREWED BEER OF ITS OWN.
The Silo is back. I urge all FOSSILS to carefully consider Sara Doersam’s and Michael Jackson’s words when they visit, and judge the new owners accordingly. Allow me to close with a few reminders why.
Good beer in general, and craft brewing in particular, is more than just the small-scale manufacturing of a commodity.
Good beer is an alcoholic beverage, a spiritual consolation, a passionate object of intellectual and sensual pleasure and the brave symbol of an intelligent lifestyle that has as its prime component an unquenchable desire to transcend the mundane.
Those lovers of good beer who view it in the way I have described are unyielding in their high expectations and aren’t easily duped by the American tendency to obscure truth with euphemistic drivel in the name of marketing, packaging and any other consideration that detracts from the fundamental primacy of the beer itself.
It’s the beer.
Period.
It’s the beer. Do it right, or get the hell out of the way and let someone else do it, someone who lives it, not as an opportune investment opportunity, but as one who gets out of bed before sunrise after a difficult full-contact evening of dissipation and says “there’s nothing like the smell of hops in the morning.”
If there’s any hope for the future of good beer in America, it has to involve “taking it personally.” And I do.
Without such a commitment, we’re right back where we started. Local brewpubs should be prime focal points for the consolidation of the beer revolution’s gains, and they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by refusing to acknowledge that what we’re doing is a revolution, seeking as its final objective the toppling of the existing order – the mainstream swillocracy.
(The End)
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As a postscript, the remake struggled, too, although the kitchen earned its share of praise. Susan Reigler’s Courier Journal review of January 13, 1996 finished with these words: “All in all, Louisiana Jack’s at the Silo is a welcome addition to the Louisville dining scene. Now, if they could do something about the beer.”
She found the beer bland and formless; there were good efforts and bad, and in general, an aura of inconsistency in the brewhouse.
Louisiana Jack’s at the Silo soldiered on until late August of 1997 (1), when the end came and plans somewhat quickly emerged to supplant the site as a home for craft brewing with a Jillian’s restaurant and entertainment location (straight outta Reno, and out of business as of 2018).
Infuriatingly, the low-mileage brewing system was sold for pocket change to a Southern Indiana excavation huckster named Clark Nickles, who used one of his cranes to extricate the tanks through a skylight (there was no other way out), load the pieces onto a flatbed trailer, park the trailer next to an old gravel pit, and allow it to repose unprotected outdoors for months like the skeleton of a deceased white elephant until finally someone bought it, although whether the by-then weather-battered tanks were intended for refurbishment or scrap was never made clear.
Is it any wonder I’m embittered?
In 2016, Mile Wide Beer Co. opened in the basement of the former Silo. Upstairs, the Jillian’s footprint now houses Railyard Billiards & Sports Pub. At last, the potential of the building is being recognized. Even in the mid-1990s, we knew better times were ahead, but first, the bad actors had to weed themselves out.
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NOTES
(1) There is an intriguing sidebar from February, 1997, which in retrospect appears as a last gasp of a Hail Mary pass on the part of the second Silo ownership group. At the time, Wynkoop Brewing Co. in Denver (principal owner was current Colorado senator and former Denver mayor John Hickenlooper) was considered a pioneering practitioner of urban core redevelopment via its brewpub in what came to be known as Lower Downtown, or LoDo. Hickenlooper’s success in the brewing biz was the foundation of his later political campaigns. Circa 1996/97, Wynkoop embarked upon a nationwide campaign to invest in local breweries, particularly those operating urban areas similar to LoDo, with the ideas being that Wynkoop would share its expertise in “adaptive reuse,” and the locals would brew Wynkoop’s Railyard Ale toward transforming it into a more widely distributed, even “national” brand. Accordingly, a Courier-Journal article reported that Wynkoop was set to become 50% owners in the Silo at an estimated tithe of $300,000, which would go toward renovations (an English pub motif), an overall redesign, and menu additions. BBC’s David Pierce recalls a keg of Wynkoop yeast being shipped to the Silo for brewer Brian Kolb’s use in making a batch of Railyard Ale. Obviously the Wynkoop/Silo marriage never made it to the altar, as the latter folded later the same year. Other Wynkoop projects in the region included a proposal for a brewpub in Evansville partnering with the parent company of Bloomington (IN) Brewing Company, which never happened, and stepping into the beached BrewWorks at the Party Source in Covington KY. If anything came of the Wynkoop connection at BrewWorks, that enterprise was gone by 1998. I concede to possessing an imperfect understanding of the Wynkoop “national investment and rollout campaign,” so if readers have information, kindly let me know.
As for the headline, it might have read “Silo will go.”
