Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 81: In 2025, the heaviness got me good, and I did NOT write a beer book.
In Louisville and Southern Indiana during the 1990s, the cadence of progress was belated and choppy as we crept toward a state of “microbrewing,” which was in the process of taking on the identity of “craft” brewing.
- 45: The Silo and Oertels, as well as a pivotal newspaper article (1992).
- 49: Bluegrass Brewing Co. — an ideal brewpub? Also, the Lite-Free Zone.
- 61: The Silo Microbrewery’s fatal travails, 1994 – 1997.
- 64: The 2,301 day McOldenberg Brewmall 1990s vigil.
There were initial stirrings circa 1989 at Charley’s on Main, where David Pierce brewed a batch or two. The Silo’s existence began with promise, yet it couldn’t escape the foibles of shambolic ownership. The Oertel’s revival never managed to finish its own brewhouse, vending contract-brewed beers for only a short time before the restaurant’s wheels became detached from a vehicle that was standing still.
Only Bluegrass Brewing Company (BBC), founded in 1993, possessed the financial wherewithal and management stability to deliver on the Louisville area’s potential for locally brewed beer. More than three decades later, BBC survives downtown by the KFC Yum! Center in truncated form ― and it mustn’t ever be forgotten that BBC’s owners, investors and founding brewer all hailed from Southern Indiana, a fact I’ve always found to be just as delicious as David’s Dark Star Porter.
(For information about Louisville brewing history as a whole, consider purchasing Kevin Gibson’s Louisville Beer: Derby City History on Draft, available here.)
There was a fallow period from 1994 into 1996 before a second generation of brewery startups began appearing in the Louisville metro area: Tucker Brewing Co. (1996 – 1999); Oldenberg Grill (1997 – 2001); Pipkin Brewing Company (1997 – 2001); HOPS Restaurant Bar and Brewery (1998 – 2001); Silver Creek Brewing Corporation (1999 – 2001); and Cumberland Brews (2000 – 2019).
In addition, two other short-lived start-ups located elsewhere were of interest to many of us during the 1990s: BrewWorks at the Party Source in Covington, Kentucky (1996 – 1998), and Jack Daniels Brewery (1994 – 1997), the latter included in the present survey because of an acquaintance with brewmaster John Barrett, as well as the proximity of Brown-Forman, the brand’s Louisville-based corporate parent.
It is crudely accurate to suggest that successful independent restaurants often charge into battle over the remains of previously fallen indies, which literally and figuratively pave the way for the next waves.
Viewed in this context, the late 1990s and early 2000s were the equivalent of primary commercial brewing education in the metro area. Investments were made and lost, lessons (often painful) were learned, a base of knowledge was amassed, and cadres of enthusiasts were prepared for future deployment when Louisville-area brewing exploded after 2011.
In this edition of “40 Years in Beer,” I’ll consider breweries from a relatively recent but largely forgotten era, with these caveats: Because Silver Creek Brewing Corporation served as the link between Tucker Brewing Co.’s equipment and New Albanian Brewing Co.’s eventual arrival in 2002, SCBC’s experience will be considered in greater depth when NABC’s foundational story is told.
And, given the longevity of Cumberland Brews, there’ll be coverage of its arrival later, together with Browning’s Brewery in Louisville Slugger Field (2002 – 2011, then succeeded by Against the Grain Brewery from 2011 to 2025) and BBC Beer Co./Goodwood Brewing (following Pipkin, 2001 – present). The chronologies of these breweries strike me as following logically on the present chapter.
Had I been quizzed in 1999 to list the “best” American breweries I’d actually visited and experienced, my top five likely would have been these, in no particular order:
- Goose Island (Chicago)
- Broad Ripple (Indianapolis)
- Great Lakes (Cleveland)
- Bluegrass Brewing (Louisville)
- Wynkoop (Denver)
In retrospect, my 1990s-era travels in the USA paled by comparison with excursions to Europe. By 1999, European breweries making my list included De Dolle, Heller Trum (Schlenkerla), Samuel Smith, Hürlimann (Samichlaus) and Pilsner Urquell. Conversely, the first four breweries above were (and remain) within easy driving distance of New Albany, with Wynkoop making this particular cut only because of my trips to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival in 1997, 1998 and 2000.
However, Wynkoop figures into the Kentuckiana narrative because it ever so briefly did business in our region, albeit under very specific circumstances.
The Wynkoop story begins in 1986, when a recently unemployed Colorado geologist named John Hickenlooper visited his brother in California.
They dropped into a Berkeley brewpub, and Hickenlooper was captivated. He returned to Denver resolving to change careers, with a stated intent to open the state’s first brewpub (brewery restaurant) of the modern era.
First it was necessary for Hickenlooper to lobby Colorado’s state government to amend restrictive post-Prohibition laws; then to find business partners with spare money to spend (“even my own mother refused to invest,” he recalled); and finally to procure space to operate.
By 1988 all the hurdles had been cleared, and the Wynkoop Brewing Co. opened at the corner of 18th and Wynkoop (near Union Station) in what might be euphemistically termed a “low rent district.”
(The name Wynkoop is a New World variant of the Dutch wijnkoop, or wine merchant, although the word also means “drinking-bout after a sale, paid for by the buyer.”)
A five-story historic building (circa 1899) in Denver’s Lower Downtown, formerly a wholesale grocery, was purchased by Hickenlooper and his partners for just shy of $1 million. They put another $600,000 into renovations, which yielded a jazz club in the basement, the brewpub/restaurant on the first floor, a huge billiard and game room on the second, and lofts on the remaining three floors.
There were plenty of televisions for watching sporting events, with Sunday football games played in Eastern Standard Time beginning before noon (Mountain Time), equating tailgating with breakfast and a halftime nap.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because Hickenlooper’s business plan for Wynkoop Brewing Co. helped define brewpubs and charter the zeitgeist, becoming a template for brewpubs throughout the United States.
Wynkoop became a microbrewery, a solid restaurant absent those off-putting white tablecloths, and a place to play pool and other games. It both validated and turbo-charged an emerging trend to revitalize undervalued urban districts with food, drink and lifestyle destinations, often inside historic buildings ripe for adaptive reuse.
In 1988, the modern American brewpub was an idea barely ten years old. Obviously the notion of a brewery restaurant, or restaurant brewing beer, had survived intact in Europe, whereas Prohibition wiped it out here. Wynkoop took the next step, pioneering the notion that a brewery could serve as transformative community anchor.
It attracted patrons to an area that soon came to be known as Lower Downtown (LoDo), and an ensuing ripple effect brought new businesses and housing conversions. Two blocks away, Coors Field was constructed for major league baseball’s expansion Colorado Rockies, launching a second wave of businesses and residential projects coinciding with the ballpark’s debut in 1995.
By the time I made it to Denver for my first Great American Beer Festival in 1997 (the GABF’s annual celebration originated in Charlie Papazian’s Boulder backyard), the area around Wynkoop and Coors Field was home to so many breweries, including the namesake brewer’s own Sandlot inside the ballpark, that we could easily walk from one to the next (all day long, in fact).
Naturally the broader formula for revitalization in America wasn’t perfect. It engendered criticism on grounds of gentrification, and while the brewing businesses seemed to succeed (Goose Island in Chicago) more often than fail (The Silo in Louisville), I must say that for those of us who were recovering from a lifetime of mass-market blandness, chain restaurants and Bunny Bread, changes like these were exciting in ways that wouldn’t merit as much as a passing glance today.
We’d look at what was happening in places like Denver and ask an obvious, if slightly disingenuous question: Can your neutered and commoditized Miller “liquid boredom” Lite ever dream of doing what our innovative (and flavorful) Wynkoop is doing here?
By the mid-1990s, Hickenlooper was thinking about planting Wynkoop seeds nationwide, although not via a traditional chain or franchise method. Rather, Wynkoop would “go national” by partnering with local investors to create bespoke brewpubs centered on historic buildings in need of attention. Most of the beers and food would be locally inspired; however, there would be signature dishes from Wynkoop’s kitchen as well as certain beers from its brewery, particularly the flagship Railyard Ale.
And this is what brought Wynkoop to Covington, Kentucky in 1997. Could Hickenlooper and his experienced team rescue the floundering BrewWorks at the Party Source?
—
BrewWorks at the Party Source (1996 – 1998)
Wynkoop’s arrival verified that the mightily ambitious BrewWorks was in trouble, and was proving to be the Heaven’s Gate of regional breweries.
Granted, I’m no cinephile, though I’m fully aware that during the 1980s, and as many as three decades to come, film director Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate was considered one of Hollywood’s most spectacular bombs ever, blamed for bankrupting United Artists and destroying the careers of Cimino and several studio executives.
Not that the movie was a uniformly bad idea; far from it. Today, long separated from the ruinous expense that Cimino incurred making Heaven’s Gate, his work has been given a more balanced reading in purely artistic terms.
In like fashion, BrewWorks must be viewed as a beer-tainment concept so very far ahead of its time that even three decades later, Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky have yet to arrive at a juncture where a beer and brewing “complex” of its scale might make sense (and more importantly, money).
In my view, BrewWorks still stands as the most significant, albeit failed, regional beer project ever in our vicinity. It might be in the single-site Top Ten nationwide; for first place, maybe Stone’s Escondido complex?
Like Heaven’s Gate, start-up costs crippled BrewWorks. I remember my friend Keith’s fascination with the cost alone of renovating the grand, historic, 19th-century Bavarian Brewery complex in Covington.
“Roger, it cost Ken Lewis $11 million just to renovate the building. That’s before he spent another dime on the necessities. Do you know how many $5 beers you have to sell to retire a debt like that?” What Lewis spent in the early 90s translates into about $22 million in today’s money ― and that’s a great many $10 beers.
(See photos and a complete history of the Bavaria Brewery buildings at this amazing website).
It was spectacular in every imaginable way. Here’s what BrewWorks had to offer, roughly 90 minutes up I-71 from Louisville, as previewed by the Cincinnati Enquirer.
BrewWorks is organized over five floors.
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- The first-floor entrance features a gift shop and access to the Party Source superstore.
- The second floor is home tom the Geek Bar, where experimental beers are featured. Also on the floor is a cigar shop and smoking room.
- The third floor houses the main bar, which will feature live acoustic folk and jazz music.
- The fourth floor has a (buffet-style) restaurant and coffee bar.
- The fifth floor houses a private party room.
1,500 brands of packaged beer were available to take home or drink on site, and 40 or more beers were on tap, including those brewed on the premises by Tim Rastetter.
Rastetter told a Cincinnati Enquirer writer that he considered himself a “stylistic brewer.”
“I try to duplicate the water, yeast, hops and grains from the regions of Germany or Belgium, or wherever a specialty beer comes from. I try to duplicate as authentically as possible.”
And he did, stunningly. Rastetter’s opening lineup included Kut in the Hill Kölsch; Schott Ale; Very IPA; and Devoe Dark. “Kut” referred to the adjacent interstate’s descent to the Ohio River, while “Schott” was Marge Schott, then the owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Devou? That’s Covington’s largest city park.
A unique feature of BrewWorks at inception was an embryonic and doomed effort to operate cashless. According to journalist Lisa Bianc Fasig, this space-age “debit concept,” one familiar to millions in 2025, required visitors “to file through a turnstile and then secure a temporary card to use for purchases that were tallied when they left.”
Common today, but Lewis “said some customers complained the process was inconvenient, especially for purchases such a single beer. Further, the lack of cash changing hands meant fewer tips for bartenders.” We can surmise the latter mattered more, and the debit scheme lasted only a few months past the opening on Oct. 31, 1996. The self-service buffet quickly converted to table service, too.
On the other hand, Rastetter’s beers were pure gangbusters. Less than a year after mashing in at BrewWorks for the first time, the brewery stunningly captured medals for four entries at the 1997 Great American Beer Festival in Denver.
- Bronze for Belgian Style Ales: Mephistopheles’ Metamorphosis
- Bronze for German Style Brown/Dusseldorf Style Altbier: Altered State
- Bronze for Munchener Helles: BrewMecca Munich Helles
- Bronze for Robust Porter: Devou Dark
Rastetter came to a F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting; the room was packed, and I can’t recall a more attentive group (someday I’ll find those photos). A great many Louisville-area beer aficionados drove up to Covington to experience BrewWorks, although I wasn’t one of them. These were busy times for me, and I’d greet frequent invitations to join the carload with “maybe next time.”
Until there wasn’t a next time.
BrewWorks flailed from the opening gun. Wynkoop took over on July 1, 1997, but there was no saving Beer Mecca, by John Hickenlooper or anyone else ― and he was no schmuck, later becoming mayor of Denver, and currently serving as a U.S. senator from Colorado).
Keith was right on the money, about the money. When debt is that high and revenues that low, only one outcome remains on the table: surrender, this being something I’d later learn in earnest when I fired myself from NABC in 2016 after the Bank Street Brewhouse debacle.
By the end of 1998, some (of Wynkoop’s) pubs, like the Upstream Brewing Co. in Omaha, were doing very well. Others, in Green Bay, Wis.; Des Moines, Iowa; and Buffalo, N.Y., were doing OK. Ventures in Wheeling, W.Va., and Covington, Ky., were described as a “disaster” by Hickenlooper.
The Denver Business Journal reported at the time that the Covington brewpub lost close to $1 million in the first year.
“I think that we had a good team in place, but we made a couple poor decisions,” Hickenlooper said. Among other things, the pubs were geographically far away, making them hard to oversee from Denver.
BrewWorks was transformed into a chain Jillian’s outlet, replete with “fun” and awash in swill; another Jillian’s replaced Louisville’s defunct Silo.
It seemed our many backward steps were not being countered with forward progress, but to reiterate, although Lewis’s reach far exceeded his grasp, the effort was admirable. It brought people into the tent, and inspired some of them to push onward.
—
Tucker Brewing Company (1996 – 1999)
Salem, Indiana was closer to home.
I was introduced to Navy veteran Todd Tucker at some point in 1994 or 1995, and I believe our common connection was Tom Schmidt, owner of the Mishawaka Brewing Company.
It seems that Todd attended Notre Dame in neighboring South Bend, and Tom previously had traveled all the way down to New Albany (that’s a four-hour drive each way) to visit the FOSSILS club in 1994.
“I remember when Tom accepted your invitation to a FOSSILS meeting,” David Pierce told me later. “He showed up with a couple 1/6 bbls. I asked him why he’d make the long trip to New Albany, totally out of his sales area. He said he was afraid of what you’d write about him if he didn’t show.
“This was pre-internets,” he added.
Around that time, we somewhat shadily got a few kegs from Mishawaka and Three Floyds via the transport services of a long-distance trucker/beer fan/pub patron.
Thanks, Bobby.
Todd Tucker was ready to get into commercial brewing, and he scouted properties in and near New Albany prior to learning of an affordable building in Salem, where city officials apparently were more forthcoming with economic assistance.
The Courier-Journal’s Dale Moss wrote about Todd’s progress on June 12, 1996.
Tucker-made “Altbier” is the biggest seller at the Joe Huber restaurant in Starlight. “Basically, it’s been all good response,” said Joe Huber III, who’d wondered how ready his clientele was for something different but who was impressed with Tucker’s drive.
“I told dad (restaurant founder Joe Huber Jr.) we don’t have any choice. I can’t tell this boy ‘no.’”
Moss noted that Todd was acting as “brewmaster/president/salesman,” and selling beer as fast as he could brew it, four barrels at a time. He soon found help, enlisting homebrewer-turned-pro Don Russell as brewer.
Russell was a patient, methodical apostle of the old-school; he steadily improved every aspect of the operation, and the improvement in consistency and character was palpable. A couple of years into it, I began drinking Tucker (American) Pale Ale more often than Sierra Nevada. I liked it. Other Tucker Brewing brands included Brown Ale (presumably the Altbier at Huber was relabeled Brown), Smoked Porter and Blueberry Wheat.
Just like it was yesterday, I remember when Todd phoned me at the Public House late in 1998, or perhaps early in 1999. He was happy the brewery had gained traction, and said that sustained financial viability was just over the horizon, but he and his wife had talked things over, and three years were enough. It was time for a family-oriented recalibration of his working life.
Did Rich O’s want to buy the brewery? Gobsmacked, I collected myself and replied no, it was unlikely that we could swing it.
However, I knew someone who might be interested: Michael Borchers, a friend in beer who’d been talking about his own step up from homebrewing. I connected Todd and Michael, and the result was Silver Creek Brewing Corporation (1999 – 2001), which bought out Tucker Brewing and moved the brewery to Sellersburg, Indiana.
Barely a year later, SCBC shook the regional beer community by purchasing the main Oldenberg facility in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, shifting all brewing operations from Sellersburg to the larger brewhouse.
However, it didn’t work out. When SCBC dissolved in 2001, the Tucker and Oldenberg brands disappeared forever, and NABC inherited the former Tucker brewing equipment, putting it into storage (Tony, you’re the best) pending completion of an addition to our building.
The first NABC batch came in 2002. Obviously there is much more to this story, and it will be considered in a future installment.
—
Pipkin Brewing Company (1997 – 2001)
Pipkin was a production facility without a taproom, pioneering the reference to 636 E. Main St. as the “Beer Corner of Clay & Main”.
Brewing has continued there from 1997 to this very day, first as Pipkin, then BBC Brewing Company (BBC’s production brewery), and finally Goodwood Brewing Co.
Pipkin was named for its British base malt, which was an uncommon choice during the late 90s owing to its greater expense.
Pipkin is a two-row winter barley with excellent malting quality properties. It resulted from a Sergeant × Maris Otter cross and the breeding program at the Welsh Plant Breeding Station in Aberystwyth, UK (Habgood et al., 1982; BBSRC Small Grains Cereal Collection Database). Pipkin might actually be genetically closer to its grandparent Pioneer—the winter parent of Maris Otter (Rostoks et al., 2006) — Oxford Companion to Beer
Reporting at Louisville Business First (Sept, 8, 1997), Terry Boyd sketched the parameters: Something’s brewing on East Main — or will be soon.
Unlike brewpub/restaurant operations that combine suds and grub, his new venture is only about wholesale beer, says Paul Hummer III, president and brew master of Pipkin Brewing Co.
Have we gotten past “suds” as a aynonym for beer? It still makes me cringe.
If I recall the story, Hummer came to Louisville because of his wife’s new job; he had previous beermaking experience in North Carolina, and thought that brewing was potentially viable in place like Louisville. I cannot resist observing that had he followed the old-school tradition of self-naming a brewery, Hummer Ales would have been the more marketable choice of identities.
In the beginning, I thought the word “Pipkin” referred to a Broadway musical.
Pale Ale and Brown Ale were intended as Pipkin flagships from the outset, later augmented by Blonde and Porter, along with a few gimmicks tied to local universities, and when sales of these opening brands were too slow, contract brewing (for BBC) was introduced for the sake of cash flow. Still, the ultimate problem with contract brewing is the enhancement in value of someone else’s brands, not your own.
Perhaps a year into Pipkin’s run, a page was borrowed from the Goose Island playbook and a Bourbon Barrel Stout was released. For many of us, it was hands down Pipkin’s best beer ever, bar none. I’m not entirely sure who conceived and implemented it, but perhaps it was Pipkin’s then-brewer Paul Philippon, future mastermind of the late Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery in North Carolina.
(Naturally, David Pierce did a barrel-aged beer first. In 1994 at BBC’s original St. Matthews brewpub, David filled a used bourbon barrel with Doppelbock and allowed it to sit outside during a wintry snap. Water freezes before alcohol, so voila! BBC barrel-aged Eisbock was the result.)
I’ll never forget my reaction to Pipkin’s Bourbon Barrel Stout. How could it not be the single best idea in local brewing history? Bourbon Barrel Stout, brewed in Kentucky and aged in bourbon barrels from Kentucky. Just imagine if the brewery partnered with the single distillery and cross-marketed the results, or did a series with multiple distilleries?
Why was Pipkin Bourbon Barrel Stout a one-time seasonal release?
I told anyone who’d listen that it could be the only beer Pipkin brewed; after all, there was ample warehouse and aging space at the cavernous “Beer Corner” property. Clear ‘em out, stack ’em high, and go all in.
In retrospect, under-capitalization almost always limits options. Pipkin’s precarious financial situation probably precluded any such marshaling of resources. A barrel-aged program would have required substantial outlays of time and money, and the brewery had a surplus of neither. It’s a fond memory nonetheless, and Pipkin Bourbon Barrel Stout should be remembered as a Louisville trailblazer.
In 2001, Bluegrass Brewing Co. formed BBC Beer Company, a second incorporation and bought out Pipkin, launching its own production brewery at the Beer Corner. As an aside, in 2006 BBC Beer Co. began brewing its Jefferson’s Reserve Bourbon Stout (a distillery tie-in that later ceased). Lexington KY’s Alltech launched its Bourbon Barrel Ale around the same time.
Bourbon Barrel Stout was BBC’s distribution mainstay in markets outside Kentucky, because of course it was. It remains the basis of Goodwood Bourbon Barrel Stout. Louisville brewing history might be very different had Pipkin decided to make Bourbon Barrel Stout its flagship.
—
HOPS Restaurant Bar and Brewery (1998 – 2001)
HOPS was an inconsequential, forgettable chain-link brewpub, remembered primarily by business publications that fetishize cookie-cutters.
In metropolitan Louisville, some of us recall HOPS primarily for the artful skewering it took from the Courier-Journal’s restaurant reviewer Susan Reigler (June 13, 1998). Reigler actually liked the food, but docked the establishment half a star for “boring” beer, and while this might not seem noteworthy today, it was apocalyptic then.
Reigler’s restaurant reviews, appearing in metro Louisville’s newspaper of record, were tremendously popular. Her positive comments about Rich O’s in 1995 transformed us overnight. She got it, expanding the critique whenever applicable from the expected food, wine and cocktails to include beer. Her review of HOPS began with an explanation of microbreweries and brewpubs: “The point of craft beer is to create a bounty of differently flavored pints by using different roasts of barley and various strains of yeast.”
(Notice the wording: “craft beer.” Even I hadn’t yet embraced the future orthodoxy.)
“It was probably inevitable that the brewpub idea would spawn a chain,” continued Reigler. “That chain is the Florida-based Hops, which recently opened an outlet off Shelbyville Road near Oxmoor Center, Hops has come up with a new twist on the microbrewery-with-restaurant model. It’s a brewpub with pretty good food and lousy beer.”
Ouch.
My first clue to this phenomenon was the declaration on the menu that the “locally brewed beer (is) served fresh and frothy in a frozen mug.” No one who wants to actually taste a beer wants a frosted, or even chilled mug, much less a frozen one.
Case in point: When we asked our server which of the Hops beers she liked best, she said she really couldn’t tell. “I don’t really like the taste of beer,” she confessed, “but when I drink it, I like it really, really cold and then I can’t taste it.”
Reigler specified that her sample tray be served with room temperature glasses. Her conclusion?
“We discovered that there was basically little of the craft-beer taste to the beers.”
—
Oldenberg Grill (1997 – 2001)
As discussed in Chap. 64, Oldenberg Brewing Company lobbed a succession of ineffectual “Hail Mary” passes during the 1990s. The last, and perhaps saddest, was merrily fleecing the public through a stock offering, with the proceeds devoted to chain-think, cookie-cutter, franchise-borne commodification.
Oldenberg would invest in satellite locations across the country, even though master strategist Wile E. Heidrich and Oldenberg’s ownership had been unable to succeed promoting their own beer at the mothership. 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.
Just three of these Oldenberg Grills ever came to fruition, in Cincinnati, Florida and Louisville.
A homebrewer named Michael A. Franznick, apparently also a commercial pilot, was the part-time brewer at the Louisville iteration of Oldenberg Grill. I only spoke with him once or twice and never got to know him; the beers he brewed, as opposed to those trucked down from Ft. Mitchell, were of passable quality in my recollection. Sadly Franznick died in early 2025; my condolences to his family.
The ultimate fate of Oldenberg’s steadily degraded headquarters became tied to a series of events that culminated in 2002 in New Albany with the advent of New Albanian Brewing Company. These eye-popping events must be saved for later.
—
Jack Daniel’s Brewery and John P. Barrett (1994 – 1997)
Louisville’s Brown-Forman (B-F), a spirits and wine corporation, dates to 1870. B-F has owned the Jack Daniel’s brand of Tennessee whiskey since 1956.
In the early 1990s, when the American macrobrew market was as flat as Jerry Gnagy’s home state of Kansas, microbreweries were viewed in some corporate beverage boardrooms as potential redeemers ― if only their unreliable indie-ness could be tamed (domesticated, if you will).
Hence B-F’s interest in developing a mockrobrew line by leveraging the name recognition of Jack Daniel’s. Contemporary accounts report the existence in 1994 of a purpose-built “micro” on the distillery grounds in Lynchburg, Tennessee; it seems likely that test batches may have been brewed elsewhere before then, perhaps even within B-F’s Louisville campus (an unverified rumor).
In late 1994, bottles of Amber Lager entered the Nashville market, followed by shipments to Baltimore, Maryland in early 1995. By then, B-F had arranged for its Jack Daniel’s beers to be produced in Cincinnati at Hudepohl-Schoenling, which had taken up contract brewing as it navigated a difficult period following the 1987 merger of its principals; its biggest client was Boston Beer Co. (Samuel Adams), which purchased the Hudepohl-Schoenling brewery outright in 1997 and flipped the relationship.
These short-lived Jack Daniel’s beers merit inclusion in this narrative because of the nearby B-F’s involvement, but more importantly, at least to me, is that the late John Barrett (1941 – 2016) served as brewmaster.
John was a classically trained professional brewer with a palpable maverick streak who nonetheless fluently spoke “corporate,” and perhaps is best viewed as a “poor” beer drinker’s bridge to Mitch Steele. I believe John’s career in beer was emblematic of the transitional period predating Steele, and fear that in the future, when this era is examined, people like him will be neglected.
That’s why I care. There were others like John, but he’s the one I actually met, and I’m determined to keep his memory alive.
John P. Barrett (1941 – 2016) was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a city familiar to old-timers as the original home of Old Style, brewed by G. Heileman Brewing Co. (1858 – 1996). John studied brewing technology at the University of California-Davis, graduating in 1967. His subsequent by-the-numbers brewery employment included stints as operations manager for Pabst Brewing Co. in Peoria Heights, Illinois, and vice president of brewing for G. Heileman back in La Crosse.
In 1992, Barrett became brewmaster at Evansville Brewing Co. (EBC), later to be promoted to vice president-brewmaster and business development manager. EBC traced its lineage to the 1860s or shortly thereafter, when several Evansville brewers (and one from Louisville, John Hartmetz) came together to form a company.
As an aside, ever since the Sterling brand experienced a failed heritage/legacy revival circa 2016, it has been widely reported that Sterling originally was brewed in Louisville during the American Civil War. This may actually be true; however, as of this writing, I cannot locate a primary source that supports the assertion.
Until such proof emerges, I’m of the mind that these “born in Louisville” citations are the accumulated result of latter-day confusion or intentional sleight of hand regarding Hartmetz’s migration to Evansville. We know that John and his brother Charles were brewing commercially in Louisville, and they agreed that one of them would move to Evansville to pursue opportunities there. The siblings may even have flipped a coin to determine which of them would move.
John went. Charles stayed and partnered in the founding of Oertel Brewing, which survived in some form until 1967.
You may be asking: Why would a Sterling founding myth be contrived a century and a half later?
My guess is that because the investors planning for a Sterling “comeback” in Louisville wanted to establish a taproom in the Highlands, they almost surely sought a configuration of economic development funds or loans. Inventing a “Sterling born in Louisville” looked good on the application forms, and besides, who would ever bother checking into it?
But until it is proven otherwise, I believe that Sterling as a brand name dates to Evansville’s Fulton Avenue Brewery no later than the 1880s.
In 1972, G. Heileman bought the historic Sterling brewery in Evansville, using it to continue production of Sterling as well as brewing a number of heritage/legacy beer brands that Heileman had been amassing during the previous decade.
“Historic U.S. brewing names that were consolidated into G. Heileman during its final years include Black Label, Blatz, Blitz-Weinhard, Drewry’s, Falls City, Grain Belt, Gluek Brewing, National Bohemian, Olympia, Rainier, Christian Schmidt, Jacob Schmidt, and Wiedemann.” (Wikipedia)
Heileman formulated a survival strategy in the late 1950s calling for growth by opportunism. The brewery acquired regional breweries at death’s door owing to the monopolistic, slash ‘n’ burn tactics of the emerging corporate brewing monoliths. Sometimes the specific brewing plants Heileman bought remained open, other times not, and production of a particular beer could always be shifted to a different Heileman outpost.
It was Heileman’s stated imperative to expand its reach, increase capacity and have a stable of presumably “different” labels, which honesty, apart from brand loyalty, all tasted pretty much the same; how could it make sense financially to vary formulation very much?
In fact, Heileman achieved significant growth this way, while presumably establishing new markets for Old Style, its own flagship brand. However, by the time the 1980s rolled around, this business model had started springing leaks.
As the brand-loyal clientele for “old-fashioned” brands died out, the brands increasingly descended into super-budget territory, with accompanying watered-down, diminished quality. I dimly recall an eventual effort to rollout Old Style as a national brand, which proved to be too little, too late given the entrenchment of the mass market monopolists.
In 1988 a consortium of investors from Evansville bought the Heileman brewery there, saving it from closure. The localized EBC continued to brew Heileman’s brands under contract, while Heileman succeeded in offloading financial responsibility for the work force. But the main problem wasn’t resolved, and diminishment of the heritage/legacy brands continued apace. EBC needed a new plan; in retrospect, it’s fair to regard the plan that emerged as “last-ditch.”
And this is how John Barrett was hired to develop brands of EBC’s own, a prominent example being Gerst Haus, a pre-existing lager brewed for two German restaurants in Nashville TN and Evansville.
What I read about all of this in the newspaper sounded intriguing, and John accepted my invitation to attend the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting at Rich O’s on September 12, 1993. It was recorded in Walking the Dog.
(Barrett) challenged the stiffest of upper lips with a case of Cave Creek Chili Beer. John also donated an assortment of EBC beers, including Gerst Haus Premium Amber, Gringo Lager, several Bicycle (fruit-flavored, Chicago market) brands, Eagle Malt Liquor, and two of EBC’s contract-brewed standbys, Wiedemann and Sterling. The latter two were, well, trying to put if diplomatically … uh, nostalgic?
Most club members knew EBC as the brewer of Sterling, which always sold well in Louisville. One of my greatest regrets from this period is that we didn’t put together a road trip to Evansville to see the historic brewery property, later almost entirely razed.
Still, experiencing EBC for what it might become yielded mixed emotions among the meeting attendees, which was clearly indicative of challenge facing John. The old standby adjunct lagers didn’t interest us at all, and the beers Barrett introduced, while technically adept, weren’t interesting enough. I clearly recall thinking that EBC wanted us to believe these beers had historic pedigrees, when they’d just been created.
They were baby steps, when aggressiveness was needed the most. As an example of the disorientation, and crazily (to me), the following year EBC introduced a Santa Claus Christmas Beer Collection gift box, with 22-ounce bottles of Christmas Ale, Christmas Amber, and Christmas Porter.
All well and good, except that I was in the business of finding more exotic seasonal beers from Belgium, England and Germany. The Porter was surprisingly solid, but it was too little, too late.
I admired what John was trying to do in Evansville. Unfortunately, as a polar opposite, his efforts mirrored those at BrewWorks, and were ahead of their time. There’d come a point when Narragansett could be reinvented, or Falls City revived and revised on the basis of craft beer styles, but not yet. Evansville Brewing Company went bankrupt in 1997.
By then John had long since decamped to Brown-Forman to shepherd its new beer project. In my recollection, he never returned for a second FOSSILS appearance in spite of my efforts at recruitment. Rather, he had a mixed case or two of the Jack Daniel’s releases dropped off at the pub for the clientele to sample (I could be mistaken about this).
I tasted most of the Jack Daniel’s 1866 Classic releases, and there wasn’t anything wrong about the beers. They also weren’t memorable, and perhaps reminiscent of Michelob: Amber Lager, Oak-Aged American Ale, Oak-Aged Honey Brown Ale, Oak-Aged Pale Ale, Oak-Aged Pilsner, Oak-Aged Summer Brew, and Oak-Aged Winter Brew.
Did they “touch” oak chips or spirals for a few minutes? Probably, and the term surely meant more for marketing than it did in the formulation. After all, “beechwood-aged” always signified something “special” about Budweiser, in spite of being used for the sake of clarity, not flavor.
In 1997, Brown-Forman quietly shelved the Jack Daniel’s brewing venture; iconic spirits ultimately were better marketed by ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails and related aesthetic abominations. B-F’s accountants presumably got their jollies writing off the lost brewery components, and the corporate structure surely took scant notice.
Happily, John was retained at Brown-Forman and glided effortlessly to other tasks. He made his home in Louisville, retired from B-F, and died here in 2016.
John was knowledgeable and personable, and the very personification of the post-WWII imperial-era beer business in America. The man knew how to work a room, and I believe he could see the future. Although I wasn’t completely aligned with his various employers, one couldn’t help liking the guy as a human being. Rest in peace, John Barrett.
Next: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 83: Full frontal hops in Poperinge, Bamberg and Žatec (1999).
