Craft Beer Radio

Hello, the Rick. I live in Goshen, KY and it was nice hearing someone from Kentucky on the show. I think you did a great job.

Louisville is really where it's at, There's Bluegrass Brewing, known for the Jefferson Reserve Bourbon casked stout. Cumberland Brewing, RichO's across the river, and a couple other micros. BBC is either meh, with their Altbier/Kolsch/lawnmower beers, or the higher alchohol beers like, jefferson, or Rye 75 IPA, which are probably B+, or A- type beers. There pale ale is a very accessable PA, it's pretty good, and if you travel down to their St. Mathews location you can get most of their beers for $45 a sixth barrel. That is cheaper than I can brew it myself, and with mine, what if it rains? All of them are much better than the BMC counterparts and are price right as well.

I've noticed that most of the bars in Lex and Louisville have quite a bit more than your standard BMC.

Kentucky Brewery (actually an industrial yeast supplier for both brewing and horse nutrition? or some such) has the clone BMC products down pretty well, the're higher quality versions of basic lagers and blonds, with the exception of their barrel aged ale, if your in the middle of Bourbon country, might as well take advantage of it to age some beer in the barrel. Their basic pale ale, is not the one I'd have chosen, but I don't own the place, so I don't get a say.

NorKy, actually is quite good, if you go to any bar along the river on the KY side from Cincinnati, you'll have a great selection, from maybe 40-50 different bottle/drafts to a few with 40 taps, mostly micro, and a couple hundred Micros.

Once you cross the border into Indiana, you have all of the fantastic beers from Three Floyds, they actually pulled their distribution back after they expanded, they retail in Indy and the Chicago Metro only. Not so big a deal for me, as it's a 30 minute drive, but beer prices in Indy are 30% higher than KY, for the same product.

Cincinnati Beerfest was in Kentucky this year, had 90+ beers, and terrible organization, but it was a huge success. $20 unlimited tastes into actual glasses, not 2 or 4 oz tasters.

Cincy Malt Infusers and the bloatarian brewing league, who put on AHA last year, have a draft comp, this year there were over 500 kegs of homebrew at their tasting event.

Ohio is a mixed bag, they have better distribution than any other state in the US, fantastic distributors, taxes are high, but not as high as most of the western states. Cincinnati had a vibrant brewing community 10 years ago, with somewhere around 20 microbreweries scattered around town, mainly on the Main Street Entertainment District, which was home to the riots in 2002-3, that pretty much closed all of that down. The Comet and Dilly Deli, are in Cincy and are rated in the top 20 beer bars in the US, and Dayton has Chappy's which should be, just based on their fried chicken, and 150beer menu. As you move into Columbus and Northern Ohio, the culture is much more vibrant. Basically the corridor up from Cincy on 71 has brewery's at every major city, Columbus has 3-4 brewpubs, and the best beer bar I've been to, The Bodega, then as you get into Akron, Cleveland area, you've got the winking lizard and 69 taps chains where they have great selections. Great Lakes in Cleveland is kind of like Boston Beer Co in the large numbers of specialty brews, but they are just a little better in every way. BTW, Boston Beer Company's first brewery was in Cincinnati, and still roughly 80% of Sam Adams is made there, although they recently picked up the Latrobe brewery to expand capacity. They partner brewed with Iron City in Pittsburgh previously.