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“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” – Attributed to Robert Heinlein
Walking the Dog was the official newsletter of the Fermenters of Special Southern Indiana Libations Society, and producing it was a monthly commitment I undertook and maintained during the club’s first decade of existence.
It is not self-aggrandizement for me to state unequivocally that the post office’s unofficial vow applied: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stay(ed) this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.” By hook or crook, I never missed a deadline.
Within the decade’s admittedly narrow context of American homebrewing club information sheets, the 1990s were mine, just as Michael Jordan owned the same decade in basketball. WTD was a superior product, and to this very day I’m proud of it. Had there been a Great American Beer Festival medal competition for homebrewing club newsletters, I’d have liked my chances every single damn year.
But even His Airness finally retired, and as the year 2000 arrived, I was inwardly cringing at the prospect of continuing to put the newsletter together. Symptoms of burnout were too obvious to ignore, and ten years of writing, editing, producing, photocopying, stapling and stamping the monthly editions had come to feel like an all-encompassing repetitive stress disorder.
Moreover, the outside world was changing fast at the dawn of a new millennium. Even the most diehard techno-Luddites, including the author, spotted glancing knowingly into a nearby mirror, were grudgingly adapting to the onslaught of the internet. Specifically, for the single finest reason apart from porn, everyone was acquiring an e-mail account.
The company’s patchwork word processor was dot-matrixing its last in 1995, and we acquired our first desktop computer with internet capability for roughly six times the cost of the laptop I’m using to write these words in 2024. One day in 2000 I noticed the fax machine coated with inch-thick dust and realized how long it had been since I’d touched it.
I methodically conducted a person-to-person survey of active club members and determined that almost nine of every ten had e-mail accounts. So what was taking me so long? The choice was clear and I made the shift to e-mail, with the print Walking the Dog masthead retired, and its content rebranded as The Not Dog. Somehow the club survived, and in 2025, F.O.S.S.I.L.S. will blow out 35 candles.
Obviously the monthly electronic tidings wouldn’t be the same without paper. Then again, not everyone had my vantage point at the bar, where I’d see customers (mostly civilians, not club members) using newsletters as impromptu beer coasters. THAT annoyed me. The Not Dog ran another four or maybe five years; ironically, little trace of it remains today. If an archive existed, it probably was lost along with a squandered web site domain at some point along the way.
In addition to personal burnout, the NABC brewery project emblemized a shift in my employment priorities. We acquired the former Tucker Brewing Co. system from the terminally ill Silver Creek Brewing Corporation circa 2000, and during the following two years work got underway to build the brewery addition to the Sportstime dining room wing.
Concurrently, the Public House’s ever increasing conceptual complexity – 20 added draft lines, numerous additional bottles (and later cans) of ever more exotic beer (and mead) offerings, an expanded floor plan – demanded my full attention. F.O.S.S.I.L.S. remained important, but I was running out of wakening hours, and decisions had to be made if we were to develop our own house beers and integrate them successfully into the existing rotation.
The challenges of multitasking rout me during the calmest of times. Honestly, I don’t know how I managed to keep up. However the overarching point of this digression is my lifelong sideline of writing.
The Not Dog segued into blogging, which for me debuted in 2004/05 with beer-flavored (The Potable Curmudgeon) and civic affairs (NA Confidential) portals for commentary. Also in 2004 I began writing beer columns for Food & Dining Magazine (and later, LEO Weekly).
I’d been writing compulsively since elementary school as a way to articulate my innermost thoughts amid soul-crushing shyness. Writing was an outlet for everything I couldn’t say aloud, but which kept churning inside my head. I spearheaded an underground newspaper in high school, and a prolific writing of letters to local newspapers after college.
Ever the slow learner and late bloomer, it took until the period following my exit from NABC before I began writing non-beer profiles and features for F & D. Earlier this year at the tender age of 64, I overheard Diana remarking matter-of-factly to a friend, “I thought I married a beer guy, but he turned out to be a writer.” You can’t imagine how happy hearing this made me. At this advanced age I’m unlikely to make game-changing much money writing, but it’s who I am, and what I’ve always been.
Seeing as I’m still trying to advance this narrative into 1995/96, back to the era of the Clinton presidency.
Early in 1995, Oldenberg Brewing Co. trudged back into my line of sight owing to another of its merrily foredoomed efforts to chase relevance with sheer gimmickry. Specifically, this was the occasion of the Ohio River Beer Festival in May. The Bluegrass Brewing Company crew allowed me to accompany them, and it was an entertaining day, if in some respects for the wrong reasons.
(The photographs I took were intended to show the names of participating breweries. Otherwise, they’re not particularly illuminating. Click to enlarge.)
To recap, Oldenberg’s opening in 1987 seemed to presage a revival of beer and brewing in Cincinnati. The Queen City, while possessing vast potential in the form of a pre-Prohibition reputation for Germania-influenced malt-based adult beverages, seemed to be coming a tad late to the microbrewing era; during my youth, Cincy was synonymous for Hudepohl (“Happy Hudey Time” at Cincinnati Reds games) and Schoenling, brewer of Little Kings Cream Ale in 7-oz bottle (which I quite liked). Once emptied, they were ideal for tossing at mailboxes and road signs).
40 Years in Beer, Part Ten: When friends actually did let friends drive drunk
Oldenberg was not located in Cincinnati proper, being situated five miles south astride I-71 in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, adjacent to the Drawbridge Inn hotel and convention center. It had been constructed in 1970, was roughly 1.5 hours driving time from Louisville, and bore the tag “Drawbridge Estate.”
Apparently Carlo Rossi and Oscar Meyer had the wine and sausage contracts.
The birth of Oldenberg’s brewery led to its self-identification as an “entertainment complex,” which nauseated me because there was precious little “complex” about the hotel and its appendages. The overall impression was one of pleasantly beige pseudo-Disneyesque blandness, absent any sort of meaningful content that might offend the sensibilities of traveling sales people, missionaries and penny dreadful contributors.
Still, when the brewery’s flagship Oldenberg Premium Verum debuted and went into regional distribution, I thought it was a hopeful development. It was a respectably golden-amber, distantly Bavarian-like lager, and tasty enough. Kegs of OPV were a decently cost-effective option for club gatherings — at least first, before the symbolism became grating.
The investment capital behind Oldenberg derived from the late Gerald Deters, who appears to have earned it from real estate and construction work. Deters was a regional tourism advocate possessing of sufficient foresight to spot potential niches for his native Northern Kentucky as a suburb of Cincinnati (for those who might be unaware, the tristate region’s major airport has been located in Kentucky, not Ohio, since 1944).
Deters’ unfortunate majordomo at Oldenberg was his son-in-law David Heidrich, an attorney roughly my own age whose inflated view of his own capabilities, as deployed in service sector businesses he obviously didn’t understand, led to seemingly endless foot-shootings that I gleefully satirized in the pages of Walking the Dog.
It isn’t that I wanted Oldenberg to fail, as there actually were good beer people working at Oldenberg. Rather, the fact that the shop floor labored so valiantly to surmount management’s cluelessness struck me as an odious regional omen for everyone engaged in the struggle for better beer.
Yes, it may well have been that Oldenberg never had a snowball’s chance in Acapulco of being a standard-bearer for better beer, as opposed to functioning as a anodyne Lego add-on to a tourist-friendly Potemkin village. But by its very nature the brewery remained a value-neutral machine fully capable of being leveraged to kill swillocrats with better beer than it customarily was allowed to brew, and as such, I forlornly held to the hope that it might someday achieve its ideal function.
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Oldenberg’s original plan wasn’t altogether bad even if the purpose-built architecture exuded well-scrubbed theme park kitsch. A promotional brochure from around 1991 listed the features (reprinted above); more than three decades later, note only that the wording is theirs, and the relationship between public relations fluff and daily reality were forever reminiscent of those pesky parallel lines.
THE OLDENBERG BREWERY: Experience the art of brewing a truly premium beer from start to finish. Designated walkways allow you to tour the entire facility as the finest malt and hops are blended and brewed to turn out just 25 barrels of Oldenberg beer a day. At Oldenberg, the brewmaster still believes quality is more valuable than quantity.
THE GREAT HALL OF OLDENBERG: Encompassing nearly a half an acre, Oldenberg’s Great Hall is packed wall to wall with fun, food, and festival entertainment (1). Of course, it’s the ideal place to enjoy cold, fresh, Oldenberg beer.
J.D.BREW’S: Step through the threshold and into an Olde English pub suitable for the likes of Shelley, Longfellow, or Keats (2). With an abundance of high-spirited fun and Oldenberg beer, you have the makings of a truly remarkable visit.
THE CROWN MARKET: Browse the Crown Market and you’ll find hundreds of gifts from sporty European clothing to Oldenberg souvenirs. It’s an adventure in shopping!
OLDENBERG BREWING COLLECTION IS BREWING!: Complete, the collection features over a million pieces – authentic cans, bottles, trays, openers, taps, signs, brewing paraphernalia and more. It’s one of the most extensive collections of brewing artifacts ever assembled, and it’s on display throughout the Oldenberg complex (3).
The brochure failed to mention Beer Camp, arguably Oldenberg’s finest idea (which strongly suggests it wasn’t Heidrich’s).
Beer Camp was described by the Gnarly Gnome web site as “a crash course in beer knowledge spread over several days, including bottle shares, tastings, and lectures.” Of course, hotel rooms were only a short stagger’s distance away.
Barrie Ottersbach used to say that if the city folk really wanted to “beer camp,” he’d take them over to Belly Acres (his rural acreage near Brandenburg, Kentucky), brew a few batches and feast on hunks of smoked venison.
However, these adventurous tales are for Barrie’s book, which I’d dearly love to edit.
At this point, I’ll turn to the legendary rock band Pink Floyd’s capable lyricist Roger Waters for a glimpse of how the Drawbridge Inn/Oldenberg Brewing/Heidrich Follies Entertainment Complex’s simplistic tenure played out.
But it was only fantasy
The wall was too high, as you can see
No matter how he tried, he could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain
By 1993 Oldenberg’s tottering management converted the Great Hall into a revolting half-acre travesty of a line-dancing emporium comprising a Northern Kentucky branch of Coyote’s (named for a regional radio personality), a country-and-western music hall concept not exactly known for a clientele that favored a genuine Bavarian-inspired craft beer milieu.
Rather, the “new” Great Hall featured Silver Bullet longneck-wielding boot, scoop and booger-ers gyrating amid remnants of the already dispersed brewing memorabilia collection.
In 1995, J.D. Brews commenced retrofitting into another numbed-down regional franchise called Burbank’s Real Bar-B-Q & Ribs (named for another regional radio personality). That same year, with a reported theoretical brewing capacity of 12,500 barrels (the legal limit in Kentucky when the brewery opened), the production figures fell closer to 8,000, itself surely an exaggeration.
Heidrich acquired the brewery from Deters in 1994 for a half-million dollars, detaching it from the Drawbridge Inn property in order to apply sufficient lipstick to the wobbly sow in preparation for showcasing in a stock offering that artfully relieved small-time investors of almost $2 million in early 1996.
Then, after a perfunctory surface pressure-washing (spiffy new labels and longneck bottles to fool the line dancers), and with remarkably little of brand equity having accrued from eight years of supposedly exemplifying “real” beer just five miles away from the city that always claimed to be the ideal representation of beery Bavarian-American culture, a new Hail Mary desperation strategy for salvation emerged: chain-think, cookie-cutter, franchise-borne commodification.
Oldenberg would invest in satellite locations across the country!
The existing brewery’s capacity would be used to supply these new locations with the “top” sellers, while smaller brewing systems on site would produce seasonals and one-offs. But just three of these Oldenberg Grills ever came to fruition, in Cincinnati, Florida and Louisville (I’ll return to the latter in a future installment; it made nary an impression locally, to no one’s great surprise).
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Oldenberg’s gratingly agit-template-propaganda never came close to contradicting the evidence of one’s own two eyes, and the brewery’s obvious potential was squandered as the conceptual sell-outs multiplied. By 1995 there was little left intact to cheer for, and all I could see were vacuous overlords utterly incapable of grasping what the beer revolution was supposed to be about.
In retrospect, I understand the Drawbridge Estate business enterprise had a nut to cover, and was prepared to do just about anything to service this debt, whether or not fanatical reviewers like me approved. Subsequently I experienced this situation twice, once on my own with NABC Bank Street Brewhouse, and then more recently when Common Haus Hall ingloriously nosedived in less than a year.
(Even if the the latter failure didn’t involve personal finance, it was in many respects more difficult to endure than the first, given that I saw so many of my BSB errors repeated. I couldn’t do anything about it, and felt horribly as a result. I wish Oldenberg had flamed out as a small winery, not a brewery. Somehow being a brewery only made it worse.)
And yet Nixon went to China, and as of 2025, the Gallagher brothers will reunite for a tour as Oasis. Throughout this long, frustrating time of Oldenberg’s deathbed degradation, I tried to initiate a dialogue with lawyer Heidrich in the form of attendance at a FOSSILS meeting.
In 1995, I offered this update.
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Commentary: Oldenberg/Heidrich Watch Ends at 750 Days on May 20
Saturday, May 20 was a rare day off from work, and an overnight trip to the McOldenberg Brewmall in Ft. Mitchell for the Ohio River Beer Festival. It was a fine day for drinking and meeting like-minded drinkers from places like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Memphis and numerous points in between.
Also on Saturday, May 20 was Day 750 of the Oldenberg/Heidrich Watch, dating back to April 30, 1993, which was the postmarked date on the last note sent to me by the McOldenberg Brewmall’s general manager, David Heidrich, promising that he would attend a FOSSILS meeting and discuss his brewing and entertainment operation.
Of course my viewpoint on the topic of Oldenberg is well known. Once upon a time, when it was the only micro on the regional block, it was a promising concept. Since then it has been steadily, inexorably degraded, and more often than not its management elects to pursue objectives that run counter to those ideals that embody the beer and brewing renaissance.
I felt this way in 1992, and I feel this way in 1995. I’ve written about it at length, and at the very least I feel that any objective observer would concede that I’ve raised issues that are worthy of discussion, over a beer or two, by reasonable people who see the merit in what is essentially a philosophical debate about the nature of art, the dictates of profit, and the extent of the relationship between the two.
In short, for three years I’ve had one opinion in search of meaningful dialogue with another — in this case, a dialogue with Oldenberg’s Heidrich, who had himself held out the possibility of just such an exchange by accepting in principle my long-ago invitation to attend a FOSSILS meeting.
As of Saturday, May 20, two long years had passed, but the day seemed to offer a fresh opportunity to bring the impasse to a close. Certainly Heidrich, as an intelligent and responsible businessman – and, by most accounts, one who will consume a good beer – would accept the intellectual challenge of the dialogue. Certainly he could be persuaded to see the benefits of exchanging ideas and talking beer with committed, beer-loving people like those in the FOSSILS homebrewing and beer appreciation club.
Alas, it saddens me to report that my depth of certainty was entirely misguided. My assumption that intelligent, reasonable people share my ideals of fairness, my faith in the primacy of ideas and my ability to express those ideas and subject them to scrutiny has been revealed as little more than naivete.
At least now it has been made perfectly clear to me that the sort of intellectual commitment that I demand of myself is too much to ask from someone like Heidrich, whose systematic, sarcastic and condescending dismissal of my concerns – and, by extension, of the very principle of free and open dialogue – marks him as a professional philistine.
That’s because after 750 days of prevaricating, Heidrich finally was able to summon the integrity to state that he has no intention of coming to a FOSSILS meeting. Little else of substance emerged from my conversation with the man who has cynically presided over Oldenberg’s steady aesthetic decline into the ranks of second-division embarrassment.
He evidently disagrees with my assessment of Oldenberg, but he can’t be induced to discuss it or to defend it. Why?
As he stated almost three years ago, his job is to gain a return on the founder’s investment. Anything goes, even if it means gutting the art of brewing by reducing it to something that is meant to provide an easily-digestible dose of alcohol in a long-necked bottle for the patrons of the country and western dance hall that occupies an ornate, German-style beer hall, and then staging special events four times a year to convince everyone that Oldenberg is really America’s premier microbrewery.
The Ohio River Beer Festival boasted one hundred beers served up by almost thirty breweries, most of which are half Oldenberg’s age. For every one of these new-generation brewpubs and microbreweries, there was a rumor floating around about the future of the McOldenberg Brewmall. Most revolved around an imminent sale, with investors supposedly waiting in the wings for the breakup of the Drawbridge empire.
One rumor alleged that Oldenberg has failed to meet contractual obligations pertaining to its collection of beer and brewing memorabilia, which used to be promoted as America’s only museum of brewing and is now scattered around the former Great Hall, presumably to be used as ashtrays and spittoons by the Coyote’s patrons.
Is this rumor true?
Don’t ask David Heidrich. He’s not talking, and with each syllable of silence he brilliantly articulates an unforgivable contempt for the philosophical ideals of the beer and brewing revolution, and no amount of quarterly gesturing amid the mock facades of today’s Oldenberg can obscure its utter aesthetic failure.
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It surprises me that I didn’t include Heidrich’s sarcastic words to me when we spoke briefly at the festival: “It must be nice to be right all of the time.”
To which I replied with something along the lines of, “Damn straight it is. Honesty works for me, but obviously I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. I’m not sure it even comes in your size.”
Later in 1995, my monthly newsletter column “The Potable Curmudgeon” returned to the topic of Oldenberg: “Exhibit A: Investing in a New, Improved Oldenberg? Not So Fast, Pilgrim.”
Here are excerpts.
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As indicated in ads in the LEO and the Courier-Journal’s Scene, stock is being offered in the company (Oldenberg) …
… Readers of Walking the Dog are likely never to know Heidrich’s exact plans, primarily because my annoying habit of speaking the truth about the aesthetically bankrupt operation he has presided over these many years has left him surly and uncommunicative. However, let’s look at the situation charitably and from a fresh perspective.
Perhaps the long decline of Oldenberg was attributable solely to its position as the neglected and misunderstood lesser part of an unwieldy entertainment empire.
Perhaps it never really was Heidrich’s fault that the remainder of the simplistic complex was so poorly and tackily run, and that he devoted most of his time to damage control, unable to implement his own plans.
Perhaps now he has heroically seized his best chance to prove that Oldenberg can really make beer of interest to area enthusiasts.
Perhaps he’ll begin by brewing our area’s answer to Sierra Nevada, or by seeking to make Oldenberg into our area’s own Great Lakes Brewing Company. After all, who would think that a microbrewery in Cleveland could go so far in terms of artistic and commercial success, given the weight of critical attention focused on other, more micro-friendly areas of the country?
Ft. Mitchell might soon become synonymous with rich, hoppy ales and burnished, hearty porters and stouts.
Certainly Heidrich knows the meaning of the Latin carpe diem, but will he act on it? He has a presumably functional brewery to work with, and at least the tattered shreds of a mandate for brewing in the state of Kentucky – albeit one that has been chronically wasted, and is now being seized by others.
Kentucky is stirring. Bluegrass Brewing Company has thrived by making and selling beer with the integrity it deserves. Radcliffe’s Folly, a.k.a. the Silo Microbrewery, may yet emerge from the ruins to brew again, as this month’s cover story suggests. As many as four micros/brewpubs could be operational in Lexington soon, according to recent articles in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
And then there is the prematurely aged and underachieving big brother to them all, Oldenberg, and yet hope indeed springs eternal. If Heidrich’s new Oldenberg venture remains true to the precepts of the beer and brewing revolution and doesn’t veer off into the Six Flags Over Bullshit approach that has so pathetically characterized the Drawbridge/Oldenberg operation to date – admittedly unlikely owing to the presence of the Coyote’s people, who have made their fortunes on grabbing, gutting and discarding brief trends – then there is at least a chance.
So, about the stock offering – until we have the opportunity to see, it’s best to hold on to your wallets. Heidrich and Oldenberg have a lot to prove, and a lot of catching up to do, and their proven flair at self-promotion will help them very little unless they can make an interesting beer for once. (4)
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You’ve already guessed that Heidrich never came anywhere close to attending a F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting. When Oldenberg’s remaining assets were purchased by the Silver Creek Brewing Corporation in 1999-2000, and Heidrich at last was rendered joyfully and permanently redundant, the total number of days elapsing since his promise to speak to the club topped out at somewhere around 2,301 (allowing for leap years).
And, if Oldenberg’s erstwhile kingpin ever ponders who ended up with his brewery office desk, you’ll see it pictured in this installment’s featured photograph … upstairs, in my house, where it houses the physical copies of our vital documents.
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Postcript: As of 2014, the entirety of the Drawbridge Faux English/Oldenberg Faux Bavarian “complex” was bulldozed into oblivion, eliminating brewery structures that were built to look old and managed in the end to attain the age of 27.
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(1) Even before Coyote’s, the entertainment at Oldenberg’s Great Hall was pure low-minors, Vegas dinner theater dreck in the form of a musical revue called Brew-Ha-Ha!, with ten singers and musicians performing material unknown in Germany, at least outside American military base USO clubs.
(2) A fetish for architectural English cosplay apparently was a Deters family tradition; the Drawbridge hotel’s original design incorporated medieval shticks, and prior to Oldenberg’s addition, the food service was reminiscent of the 1960s/70s Steak and Ale chain.
(3) Legendary Wisconsin breweriana collectors Herb and Helen Haydock regrettably found themelves sucked into Heidrich’s bottomless aesthetic vortex and provided Oldenberg with their extensive breweriana collection, which fared about as badly as everything else he touched. Watch this video with Helen for more (husband Herb died in 2019).
(4) When the “middle tap” was added to the first keg box at Rich O’s, the first beer to be poured was Oldenberg Outrageous Bock, which I recall being solid for an American-style Bock. Note the typography: OUTRAGE-o-US BOCK.
