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FREQUENTLY(and often peskily)ASKEDQUESTIONS |
Are there others? Let us know.
Hey, Rich, how about another beer ... uh, you’re Rich, right?
Why is there a blue toilet seat on the wall?
What’s the difference between ale and lager?
Is my beer supposed to be served this cold/warm?
My grandfather told me that bock beer …
Can you get Fat Tire/Alaskan Amber/Westvleteren 12?
What were the Top Twenty Songs of the Millennium?
Speaking of Guinness, does Karl still hold the single session pint record?
Do you have any "normal" beer?
Do you bottle your house beers?
Didn’t you have a problem of some sort with Big Red Liquors in Bloomington?
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Hey, Rich, how about another beer ... uh, you’re Rich, right?
My income level is none of your business. Let’s just say I’m comfortable, and can buy the better grade of salami these days if the mood strikes. My name is not Rich. It is Roger. No one in my family is named Rich, either. Actually, Rich was the original owner of the business, and its namesake dating back to 1990. He is gone, and only his name remains. For now.
I seem to remember a long time ago that you were thinking about changing the name from Rich O’s to something else. Now I see that the doorway says “Public House” without the “Rich O’s.” What gives?
Way back during the halcyon days of Bill Clinton’s first term, we considered a name change, and we even held a contest to solicit a new one. Nothing came of it, but recently we decided to ever so gradually permit the Rich O’s name (and Sportstime’s) to whither away, and to encourage our customers to think of us as the New Albanian Brewing Company, with a Public House and Pizzeria – hence the doorway art you’ve seen when visiting.
Just for kicks, here are some of our favorite entries from the long ago name change contest (A to Z):
***Sloppy's***
Academian Nut Pub, The
Big Chief Tablet, The
Cozy Rut, The
Drunken Messiah Pub, The
Eddie LaDuke's Place
Farting Rat Pub, The
"G (eorgio)" Spot, The
House of the Rising Bigfoot
Inn Utero
Jolly Roger, The
Karl Scharrer's Real Home
Lenin 'n' Leave 'em Cafe
Morning Wood Pub
NLA (No Lite Allowed)
Overflowing Ashtray, The
People's Glorious Revolutionary Bar & Grille
Quaffing Albertine, The
Roger's Babe Emporium
Surly Cock Pub, The
Two Babes and Ignatius
Urge Overswill
Velvet Elvis, The
We Close at Ten
Xenophilia's Heinie, The
You Know, the Place Next to Sportstime
Zymurgy in Paradise
Regular customer and Internet scribe Dave Siltz once overheard someone asking this question:
This dingbat behind me just asked me why the red room is called the red room. I told her that it might have something to do with the wall that's painted red, but that my money was on the 11,000 pieces of Communist memorabilia on the walls.
In short, the Red Room means whatever you want it to mean, but in the very beginning, it meant that the rear wall was large enough to accommodate the oversized three-part Lenin poster (purchased in the USSR) that I’d never previously had room to hang in my various places of residence.
Mundane, but true. The remainder of the artifacts have hung themselves.
Why is there a blue toilet seat on the wall?
Here’s the explanation, but seeing as it’s lengthy, you might want to open a beer first.
My rediscovery of the toilet seat from Jim Morrison’s Blue Bus, by Uncle Don Barry (1996).
What’s the difference between ale and lager?
Glad you asked. As terms, “ale” and “lager” exist to divide the world of brewing into “top-fermenting ales” and “bottom-fermenting lagers.” Both terms refer to the behavior of the yeast during fermentation. Top fermentation was the default brewing mode until the advent of cooler, bottom fermentation techniques two hundred years ago in Germany and the present-day Czech Republic. Most (but not all) classic continental ale styles hail from the British Isles and Belgium, while most (but not all) lager styles have origins in Germany and Central Europe. American microbrews usually are ales, although there are notable exceptions.
Is my beer supposed to be served this cold/warm?
We’d dearly love to be able to serve all our beers at the proper temperature, but this is complicated immensely by the fact that we're using seven separate refrigeration units to store them. I used to try and keep the beers in the 45-degree (F) range, and still prefer them to be kept this way when possible, but to be brutally honest, it doesn’t always work out that way.
In general terms, the colder a liquid is, the less you'll be able to taste it, and while mass-market swill is enhanced by the suppression of the drinker's taste buds, better beers are not. Take our word for it: Once you grow accustomed to good beer served cool, and not ice-cold, you'll never go back to frosted mugs of insipid MGD – except when your neighbor offers you one in return for your help in his yard … and even then, I’d turn it down flat.
My grandfather told me that bock beer …
He meant well, but it isn’t true. Bock beers do not come about because of the dark residue of once-yearly spring cleaning. Also, the beer you had in Prague that was identified as “12” referred to gravity, not the alcohol content (and the fact that it made you drunk probably owed to your injudicious use of absinthe – have you retained nothing from your study of French art and literature?). Darkness is not an indicator of strength, and ale won’t give you a headache unless you drink far too much of it. The same goes for lager. However, the more of any beer one drinks, the greater chance that Old Drinker’s Tales will be spun, perpetuated and created.
Can you get Fat Tire/Alaskan Amber/Westvleteren 12?
The answer is “no” to all three, because they don’t have legal distribution channels in the state of Indiana. Neither Fat Tire (New Belgium Brewing in Colorado) nor Alaskan Brewing Company seek to ship beer as far away as Indiana, and Westvleteren’s Trappist abbey does not wish to export from Belgium to America.
What were the Top Twenty Songs of the Millennium?
In the year 2000, Rich O’s barflies voted, and the results are to be found here.
You have an extremely long memory considering the amount of alcohol involved. Back in 1992, when we bought Keg Box #1 (1992-2006) and concluded that the market might support the sale of draft Guinness on a regular basis, it was decided to keep use a clipboard to keep track of the pints consumed by regular customers, and to reward those “kegging out” with 90 Imperial pints – or a keg’s worth of Guinness. Shortly thereafter, the Keg Club was extended to Carlsberg, the second beer on draft at Rich O’s.
As the customer base expanded, it became ever more difficult to keep records, so after a few months the whole idea was dropped, but not before several dozen patrons “kegged out.” Some day I’ll list them. Until then, they have their memories … or perhaps not.
Speaking of Guinness, does Karl still hold the single session pint record?
Yes, he does. On April 24, 1994, Karl Scharrer drank 18 pints of Guinness at a single 12-hour session. Of course, he wasn't driving on that far-off day/night, and to be truthful, we really don't condone this sort of activity any longer (have you tried to insure a drinking establishment lately?) ... but it seemed like fun at the time. Come to think of it, Karl’s session probably accounted for a monthly mortgage payment. Cheers.
Do you have any "normal" beer?
Yes, we do. According to FDA guidelines, we have certified each and every one of our beers to be "normal" by means of a secret, mysterious process that involves a clean glass, a big thirst, and a willingness to glance outside the mainstream beer box, if only fleetingly. Some of our normal beers are foreign, and some are American. Some of our normal beers are not "that dark &*%#." However, not a single one of them is "light, low-calorie lager" because (all together now), we’re a LITE FREE ZONE.
Do you bottle your house beers?
No, and we have no plans to do so barring a decision to have a beer or three contract-brewed for us elsewhere at a brewery built for the job. Bottling is the reason why so many brewers go swimming in a pitcher of their own beer – sometimes during regular business hours.
Can we get NABC beer in (fill in name of state)?
No, unless the name of the state is Indiana, where we are legally permitted to self-distribute. In Indiana, you can get NABC beer by the growler at our Public House and Pizzeria, or by the glass at one of our off-premise accounts. We maintain a Kentucky distribution agreement solely to participate in the annual Brew at the Zoo celebration. We do not ship beer through the mail or parcel delivery services.
From the Michael Quinion column “World Wide Words,” in which Quinion “writes about international English from a British viewpoint.” Go here for the complete column.
“To rush the growler (sometimes to roll the growler and other forms) was to take a container to the local bar to buy beer. The growler was the container, usually a tin can … It’s certainly older than the Prohibition era: the first reference to the expression appeared in print around 1883. Though one early example suggests it was originally low tramps’ slang, by about 1885 it had clearly become widely known around New York and had become acceptable in print.”
Didn’t you have a problem of some sort with Big Red Liquors in Bloomington?
No, not at all. However, they had a problem with NABC, and on that wonderful day when the Publican is declared dictator, you'll see a handful of stuffed Big Red’s stuffed shirts fleeing in panic to a well-deserved exile in Canada.
Read about it here: Absolute power corrupts Big Red Liquors absolutely.
