
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 71: A-B, Molotov cocktails, Mitch Steele and me (G.A.B.F., 1997 & 1998).
On November 8, 1998, something I thought would never happen actually did. At the regular monthly meeting of the Fermenters of Special Southern Indiana Libations Society, held as always at Rich O’s Public House, the club’s very special guest was Mitch Steele of Anheuser-Busch.
Then again, Nixon did go to China.
Steele was a tremendous hit, even though it remained the case that far more New Albany residents would have turned out to fete the brewer had we advertised him in the local newspaper as “The Man Who Makes YOUR Bud Light.” Obviously we didn’t — because then they’d have insisted on drinking Bud Light.
An eventful travel year passed between the 1997 Great American Beer Festival, when I first met Steele, and his arrival in New Albany (both European trips will be described in a forthcoming installment).
- March 1998: the inaugural motorcoach tour of Dutch and Belgian beer bars and breweries, serving as a prototype for future group excursions.
- July 1998: immersion in the entirety of Pamplona’s Festival of San Fermin, followed by stays in the French Alps and London.
- October 1998: in Denver for G.A.B.F. Mach II.

Unfortunately I have little recollection of the events leading up to Steele’s appearance at the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting, primarily because our company’s early e-mail correspondence constantly was being added then lost as we ineptly sought to establish a succession of websites on newish mom ‘n’ pop domains that more often than not crashed and burned in the still of the night.
And yet an account was written for Walking the Dog (the official newsletter of F.O.S.S.I.L.S.), appearing in the year’s end double issue. I have not been able to locate any photos of the meeting
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Mitch Steele: A great guy does not make a great multinational corporation.
It shouldn’t be a problem, or so I thought.
There would be plenty of time before the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting began to run over to Bluegrass Brewing Company with Syd and Cory Lewison. Our guest speaker for the evening, Mitch Steele of Anheuser-Busch, said he would be there, and it would be a good chance to get to know him better in a more relaxed setting.
Predictably, B.B.C. turned out to be a little too relaxed, a feeling probably exacerbated by the divinely inspired presence of Bearded Pat’s Barley Wine on tap. Three Wort Hog mugs later, we managed to get out of the parking lot with only fifteen minutes to spare before meeting time (and 16 miles to drive).
It was a simple matter to rationalize being late: “Shucks, hardly anyone ever comes on time to a meeting.” Everyone knows that a 6:00 p.m. start means that we’re lucky to get going by seven.
With Cory behind the wheel, we roared into the parking lot at Rich O’s by 6:13. To my amazement, people were lined up on both sides of the entrance glaring at the locked front door. It was a madhouse. Biscuit had to go behind the bar to satisfy the demand for beer prior to the start of Mitch’s tasting.
As it turned out, Mitch Steele’s appearance at the November 8 F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting drew the largest crowd we’ve ever had at a regular monthly gathering at Rich O’s: 75 people. The seven cases of beer Mitch brought were gone quickly, producing the year’s biggest raffle prior to the Christmas party, and by executive decree, the raffle offered a heaven-sent opportunity to dispose of the garish red Anheuser-Busch blazer that Michael Truitt donated so long ago.
Many in attendance were anticipating a showdown between myself (billed as the purist in the white hat) and Mitch (the suave representative of the dreaded swillocracy). They were destined to be completely disappointed.
From the beginning, it was not my intention to participate in the question and answer session. Given the sheer number of people crammed into the place, the need to serve as beer steward, and the lingering after effects of the BBC visit, I probably couldn’t have been coherent even if I’d wanted to.
But what I hoped would occur would be F.O.S.S.I.L.S. members asking plenty of good questions, and this happily was the case.
We learned of Mitch’s educational background at U.C.-Davis. We listened as he defended A-B’s foreign policy in the Czech Republic. We were told of the demise of the American Originals line, of Mitch’s new job in the St. Louis brewing plant, and of how he keeps good beer in his refrigerator along with a six-pack of Budweiser.
Why? Until he moved to St. Louis, he never really understood the heat and humidity of the American Midwest, and how good Bud is to quench the thirst it brings on.
In short, we witnessed an amazing, courageous attempt at the squaring of a circle. Mitch’s credentials as a lover of good beer were presented, examined, and ultimately accepted with almost no reservations by those in attendance.
At the same time, Mitch attempted to portray Anheuser-Busch as an employer fully compatible with good beer, and thus not incompatible with the good taste in good beer of someone like Mitch Steele. Most in attendance appreciated Mitch’s efforts, but I think few of us are willing to let A-B off the hook quite so easily.
Four beers Mitch brought to the meeting were commercial releases, and three others were from experimental batches brewed in-house.
The first four:
- Michelob Hefe-Weizen. A forgettable American wheat ale that shouldn’t bear the name of a German style that implies so much more than the Michelob version is designed to deliver.
- Pacific Ridge Pale Ale (available only in California). Everything about it screams the intent for it to be a mild American-style pale ale somewhere in the Sierra Nevada ballpark, but it’s not anywhere near home plate. In this case, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
- Michelob Porter. Another limited distribution Michelob specialty, and perhaps the best of the commercially released bunch. It was entered into the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. homebrewed porter contest as a ringer, and came away the winner. It wouldn’t be a bad, inexpensive 6-pack in the absence of other, bolder choices.
- Winter Brew. An all-malt lager with slightly less than 6% abv. It reminded me of a Dortmunder or export style, and in my ideal brewing world, a beer like this would be the everyday lager, not a seasonal exception to the rice-choked norm. In the world of A-B, it is promoted as a winter specialty.
The final three beers sampled were German-style wheats: Hefeweizen, Dunkel Hefeweizen, and Weizenbock. All were experiments stemming from the Crossroads Hefeweizen that A-B did several years back. All were brewed to style with German wheat yeast.
None is likely to see the light of day as an official A-B release, for as Mitch informed us, every effort on the part of his employer to brew something bigger and more interesting has failed to endure one or another test, either internally (within A-B) or externally (the market).
Why? Reading between the lines, Mitch’s testimony admittedly softened my traditional view of A-B as a monolithic entity.
It would appear that there are factions at A-B just like anywhere else. Some decision-makers in the company want to go into mockrobrews in a big way, while others advocate sticking with the bread and butter profitability of mass-market swill.
When the company has experimented with different products, some have been left alone to be as Mitch and his compatriots intended them, while others have been disfigured by the interference of marketing geniuses. Listening to Mitch, I was left with the impression that not every A-B employee is on the same page at all times.
As for Mitch himself, there can be little doubt that in most significant respects, he is “one of us.” It may be true that he’s not a fan of Belgian ales, but can be forgiven for that. If I can get him to Belgium someday, he’ll understand. In the meantime, he knows beer, and he likes good beer.
This brings us back to the squaring of the circle, and one of the toughest of eternal questions: How are we to feel about those men of seeming good faith who do work to which we are philosophically opposed?
Make no mistake about it. Mitch works for a company that by virtually every objective standard is the antithesis of all that we as F.O.S.S.I.L.S. strive to achieve. I’m certain he would argue this point; he’s a good company man, and he understands who signs the checks, but there are some aspects of A-B’s position in our society that are too obvious even for a company man to ignore.
For instance, Mitch has said on more than one occasion that lovers of good beer shouldn’t disparage the choice of the common fellow, who buys the beers that he knows he likes: Bud, Miller, Milwaukee’s Best, and so on.
What Mitch ignores, and what makes A-B (and other corporations like it) our enemy, is that through its size and its financial clout A-B is able to influence the common fellow’s likes and dislikes in myriad ways that are designed to subvert, not enhance, freedom of choice.
A-B can do this through pervasive saturation advertising, and it can do it by strong-arm tactics like seeking to influence the business decisions of its distributors with regard to what they distribute. The aim is to convince the consumer that there is only one choice, and I find this repugnant.
Contrast this with the goal of F.O.S.S.I.L.S. and others like us, which is to educate the consumer and to place the consumer in a position of control, not in a position of susceptibility to mass-market persuasion.
When the last pint has been drained, this saga comes down to money. Money is as much of an answer to the conundrum as we’re likely to get, although it certainly isn’t the only one. It would be easy to say that Mitch is in it for the money — that if he could get the same money at a micro as he gets at A-B, he’d be doing that instead.
I suspect it’s more complicated than that. What is your chosen profession, and what is your view of what constitutes the pinnacle of your chosen profession?
Salary and compensation figure large in any such assessment, yet so do intangibles that have to do with perceptions, self-image and professional pride.
Playing in big league baseball is one thing; playing big league baseball for a storied franchise like the New York Yankees is another. There is a mystique and an aura about the Yankees. As the flip side, there is also enmity on the part of those who are not fans of the Yankees — those who are on the outside.
Who bothers to “hate” the Montreal Expos? What would it prove? But millions “hate” the Yankees, and this merely reinforces the club’s mystique in the minds of those who’ve wanted to believe it in the first place. The fact that the pay is good is icing on the cake.
Mitch Steele knows and loves beer. He has gone to school to learn how to brew beer, he has served his apprenticeship in the minors, and he has worked his way to what he undoubtedly considers to be the top of his profession: Anheuser-Busch, the New York Yankees of the brewing world.
It’s the best money, but it’s also the best equipment, the best resources, and the most powerful support apparatus. It’s the chance to devote his talents to the pursuit of “pure” brewing science at the world’s most proficient brewing academy.
If Mitch Steele, beer lover, has indeed made a deal with the devil, at least it’s a devil he knows. We can’t fault him for doing the best he can to support his family, and pursuing his profession to what he considers to be its pinnacle.
At the same time, here’s to the hope that we haven’t lost him forever, that someday he is awakened to the reality that his professional skills are being given over to an advanced technical proficiency that by definition threatens to obliterate the spiritual and artistic natures of his field of endeavor.
Hey, Mitch: It’s never too late. C’mon over to our side.
(End of the 1998 article)
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It’s never too late. C’mon over to our side.
Of course, that’s exactly what Mitch Steele did in 2006, jumping from the empire of the wet air to the arrogant bastard’s lair when he joined up with Stone Brewing Company, which appeared poised for world (craft) beer domination. It didn’t happen, but through no fault of the brewer’s. Mitch explained the seismic change in a 2012 interview: On Tap: Interview with Stone brewmaster Mitch Steele.
After four years of brewing as a second job (at San Andreas), I decided to make brewing my career, and got a job with Anheuser-Busch in Colorado. I figured (correctly) that A-B would be a great place to learn how to manage the brewing and fermentation processes. I had a good career at A-B, it ended up being 14 years and I got to do some really great and fun things with them and learned a lot. But I was really itching to get back into craft brewing by the time I left in 2006 to join Stone Brewing Co.
What I like about our approach (at Stone) is that we are all craft beer fans here, and we brew what we like to drink – which for the most part are aggressive, bold-flavored beers. We like to take risks with ingredients, and don’t constrain ourselves with style guidelines. It’s a fun environment to brew in, it allows all of us to be creative, and we are encouraged to try different malts, hops and brewing techniques all the time. I like to also think that we do a good job with the consistency of our core brands. It’s very important that people buying our core beers know what they are going to get, and that they get an awesome experience every time they drink one of our beers.
In 2016, after a decade with Stone, Mitch launched his own venture: New Realm Brewing Co., with locations in Atlanta GA, Auburn AL, Charleston SC, Greenville SC, Suffolk VA and Virginia Beach VA.
New Realm is an American craft brewery and distillery started in 2016 by co-founders Carey Falcone, Bob Powers and Mitch Steele…New Realm’s core principles are quality, creativity, authenticity, and striving for perfection, all with a customer-centric community-focused commitment and approach.
As mentioned previously, Mitch has established unimpeachable credentials for induction into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame; the only question is timing, and when the inevitable occurs, his tenure with pre-merger Anheuser-Busch will have been rendered into a happily minor career footnote.
As of January 2025, it has been 26 years and two months since I last chatted with Mitch Steele face to face at the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting documented above. However, there was to have been a follow-up in February, 2014 at an event called “Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture” held at the University of Kentucky (my mom’s alma mater, by the way).
This event will showcase the professional writing – in print and digital media – that is dominant in the craft beer industry. Writing has played a major role in promoting the business of craft beer. Craft Writing will serve as an event that draws interdisciplinary attention to the ways industry utilizes writing – in various digital forms – to promote, inform, highlight, argue, market, brand, and foster relationships between products, consumers, and other relevant parties.
The organizer was Jeff Rice, a U.K. faculty member and craft beer lover, who assembled a stellar, power-packed lineup of featured speakers into which I was somehow inserted as an itinerant beer blogger and presumably an all-purpose Bob Uecker lookalike:
- Garrett Oliver (keynote speaker), Editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer, author of The Brewmaster’s Table, regular contributor to All About Beer. Brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery.
- Stan Hieronymus, author of For The Love of Hops, Brewing with Wheat, and Brew Like a Monk. Blogger at “Appellation Beer” and “For the Love of Hops.”
- Julie Johnson, Co-owner of All About Beer, former Editor of All Bout Beer. Currently Technical and Contributing Editor.
- Teri Fahrendorf, 25-year beer industry veteran, founder of the Pink Boots Society, author of beer related articles, 19 years as a brewmaster at Steelhead Brewing, Triple Rock Brewing and Golden Gate Brewing, and blogging gypsy “Road Brewer.”
- Roger Baylor, owner of New Albanian Brewing, author of “The Potable Curmudgeon.”
- Jeremy Cowan, owner of Shmaltz Brewing, author of Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah.
- Mitch Steele, Brewmaster at Stone Brewing, author of IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes, and the Evolution of India Pale Ale.
Holy Alpha acids, Batman — what was I doing among these luminaries?
Unfortunately in the end Mitch couldn’t make it, but the symposium itself proved to be great fun, and I wrote about the experience at the former LouisvilleBeer.com website.
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Not so simple a symposium (2014).
It isn’t often that two A-List highlights from one’s entire life occur in a single weekend, but it can happen. In fact, it just happened to me. Both memorable moments came about because of the craft writing symposium held in Lexington, Kentucky, on February 15.
The lesser of the two came on Saturday afternoon when keynote speaker Garrett Oliver called me out by name (“Mr. Baylor”), to contest a previous bullet point I made about two eighteen-wheelers filled with craft beer, passing each other on a lonesome prairie interstate highway, headed for opposite coasts.
Would the drivers even know to wave amid the ever widening carbon footprint of their payloads?
Mr. Oliver disagreed, deploying every bit of the thoughtfulness and erudition I’d expect from a man who probably means more to me for his beer writing than his beers. After all, there are 2,500 American brewing companies. They make quite a lot of fine beer, but how many produce The Brewmaster’s Table, or edit The Oxford Companion to Beer?
None, I say. None. I’m just happy he was listening.
But even more wonderful was my experience checking into the Hilton on Friday. The desk clerk keyed in the reservation, smiled broadly from behind the counter, and announced loudly, so as to be heard by the other travelers in my queue: “The English Department’s got your room.”
I very nearly burst into tears. Finally, to be riding on the coattails of academia!
Verily, it’s a first for me to have the English Department at any university, anywhere in the world, pick up a tab for me. The Philosophy Department at IU Southeast certainly never did. Imagine my glee when I learned that although niggling rules prevented the English Department’s coffers from being tapped to support my beer habit, the hotel’s breakfast buffet was being comped as well. Mounds of bacon and salmon never tasted so good.
(Note to Jeff Rice: I swear we had no idea those single shots of mediocre hotel espresso cost $4 each.)
I was just happy to be there, doing my best to help the symposium team, and resisting the urge to make Big Blue jokes. It was a weekend to be cherished.
Stan Hieronymus drove from St. Louis into New Albany on Thursday evening and spent the night with us. It had been a while, and catching up’s always wonderful. The symposium itself marked my first time meeting Teri Fahrendorf and Julie Johnson, and they were delightful.
While I’d shared a festival beer tent with Jeremy Cowan once upon a time, the weekend provided the chance for some hang time. He’s a funny, passionate and genuine man, and his self-deprecating presentation about the history of Schmaltz definitely reminded me of NABC, albeit in a much smaller way.
It was disappointing that Mitch Steele couldn’t make it, but he had a family emergency at home and stayed in California. Someday I’ll have the chance to follow up with him about the time he came to the Public House and discussed his working life with Anheuser-Busch, before moving on to Stone.
In all sincerity, it was an honor to be included on the panel. Truth be told, I’d been in training for about six weeks. I lost some weight, sobered up (to an extent), did some reading, and thought much about the impression I wanted to convey in my slot.
In the end, I decided that brevity would be the soul … well, if not of wit, then all the better to introduce a number of ideas, then stand aside and let them penetrate.
To those reading this column who came up to me afterwards during the game-night pub crawl and chatted about some of these subversive ideas, thank you very much. The point is shifting, not lurching; it’s instigating thought, not indoctrinating. It seemed to go over well during the coffee-fueled day, and equally through a beer-soaked night.
Among the many fringe benefits of the symposium was the belated chance to visit some of Lexington’s best beer spots. On Friday night, it was Country Boy. On Saturday, as all of downtown Lexington was riveted to the nationally televised game at Rupp Arena, our stops were at The Beer Trappe, West Sixth and Blue Stallion.
Now it’s Monday morning, and the weekly grind begins anew. There isn’t enough time to attempt a coherent survey of Saturday’s talks, which were uniformly excellent, apart from noting that for me, six hours of thinking about beer seems the perfect way to approach the same number of hours drinking it.
Of course, it would be comparing apples with oranges (Lambic to Märzen?) to say that a symposium is better than a festival. They exist for different reasons, and yet for me, the weekend provided proof for something I already knew: I need elements of both. There’s a place for thinking and drinking at home, and for indulging in both of these pursuits among other humans, out in the agora, where the cross-pollination comes down and minds hopefully expand.
The craft writing symposium’s verdict might be summarized as this: Craft beer is about people and their stories. I can only hope that in my own pursuit of better beer, I periodically resemble that remark. Gushing and glowing thanks to everyone involved with making the invigorating event happen. Let’s hope it happens again, with more highlights.
(End of the 2014 article)
Next: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 73: All 42 pages of the 1999 Rich O’s beer list.