Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 72: Mitch Steele attends a F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting (1998).
I cannot recall the specific impetus for creating the most renowned iteration of the Rich O’s Public House Beer List, as displayed in a 3-ring binder, and which had grown to 42 pages by April of 1999.
Megalomania, perhaps.
After 1999, the burden of updating the beer list led me to explore different options, which is to say the printed version looked like pages 41 and 42 below, and a chalkboard covered drafts. Simpler and more efficient, but providing only a fraction of the joy afforded by the Tome.
A beer list of some sort had existed from the start of Rich O’s BBQ, invariably confusing those visitors who expected to be told that we had both families of beer — Bud and Miller. The beer list grew larger and more informative along with availability of selections. Evidently by late 1997 or early 1998 I was feeling ambitious, and more importantly, finally had time enough to get expansive.
The result can be viewed below, front to back.
The only aspect of this beer binder I find surprising in retrospect is the number of beers in bottles (and maybe even a can or two) that we offered in 1999: around 175, give or take a J.W. Lees Vintage Harvest. Granted, as time passed more of the world classics than ever before were available from Indiana wholesalers, and the flow of American-brewed “micros” also continued to increase.
How could we afford taxes on the inventory? Easy; gentlemen don’t tell (what they avoided counting to begin with). But how were they chilled?
Noting that some weren’t chilled, and if memory serves, to augment our traditional storage space inside the Sportstime walk-in cooler we’d started collecting gently used refrigerators and lining them up inside my former cubbyhole office space next to the Red Room, itself supplanted in early 1999 by a walk-in cooler purchased at auction from a shuttered mini-mart in the Highlands.
This walk-in promptly became home to a dozen draft lines, with backup keg storage space (beer lines and hardware were installed by Matt “Brew Boy” Gould). Inside the walk-in the forever enterprising Kevin Richards built shelves for the bottles, which held almost all of them save for a few higher-volume beers that came in six-packs, which remained housed at Sportstime.
All available shelving behind the bar soon was overwhelmed by glassware, primarily Imperial pints but gradually including whatever signature glassware was capable of being acquired. I’d have liked to be as comprehensive with our glassware as a typical Belgian cafe, but soon realized that “close” was good enough.
So it was that I created the binder, and all these years later folks still remind me about it on a regular basis. For many the effect was “shock and awe,” and quickly enough the binders began disappearing, thus the price tag on the cover; you could buy the printed pages sans three-ring for $3.50, and read it at your leisure back home.
Here it is, the final edition from April 22, 1999.
All 42 pages of it.
If there remains any doubt that my primary motivation was education (some might say propagandization, and I wouldn’t quibble much), let the following pages dispel these doubts. I had images, though only basic; the gist of it came from my words, and to be candid, whenever someone says to me that a picture paints one thousand of them, I’ll usually scoff, forego the photo and write the damn words myself just the same.
To me, Instagram and internet-borne flashcard images have gutted beer appreciation. “Ooh look, it’s chartreuse” does not replace basic stylistic knowledge.
My plan was to compel our customers to fall in love with the idea of beer in addition to the liquid in the liquid, such that they’d care enough to chase their own personal visions of excellence wherever these might lead.
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Next: 1998 European group travels in Netherlands and Belgium.
