Beer Man is a weekly profile of beers from across the country and around the world. This week: Bluegrass Brewing Co.; Louisville, Ky.

By ANDREW OPPMANN
The (Appleton, Wis.) Post-Crescent

HEBRON, Ky. - I like to travel and I really don’t mind flying, but I must confess that I’ve become less enamored with big-city airports these days.

Nothing against the fine folks working to keep us safe in the skies. They’ve got a big job to do and I don’t mind the occasional inconvenience of a long security line.

Perhaps it’s more my luck of picking flights that get canceled or overbooked. When that happens, and you’ve got time to kill in a terminal, the beverage choices are often disappointing.

Imagine my surprise when, at the Comair terminal at the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, I found a brewpub bearing the Bluegrass Brewing Co. brand. My luck was changing.

Bluegrass, a Kentucky brewery based in Louisville, is best known for its pub-and-grub locations around the commonwealth’s largest city. They opened in the Cincinnati airport (which, by the way, isn’t in Cincinnati, but across the river in Kentucky) in 2001.

Company President Pat Hagan said the airport brewpub usually has four staple beers on tap: the Altbier, American Pale Ale, Dark Star Porter and Nut Brown Ale. At most times, one or two others can be found, including an occasional seasonal beer and a golden brew.

My, um, research was confined to the porter and the alt.

The porter, named for the winner of the 1953 Kentucky Derby, is a dark English-style ale. It’s got a smooth, chocolate tone and ends with a pronounced hop finish. This is beer with character, reinforced by a strong hint of its roasted malts. It is 5.6 percent alcohol by volume.

The alt, winner of a 1996 Great American Beer Festival bronze medal, is an amber ale that isn’t off-putting to those tentative of microbrews. It has a mild hoppy flavor - not too bitter, but enough to make it distinctive. It is 4.19 percent alcohol by volume.

Bluegrass loves the hops: “We tend to favor them,” Hagan says. “You should try our pale ale. You could put it side by side with Sierra Nevada and you would say ours has more hops.”
Hagan says his beers are only available in bottles in select locations in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. So, unless you live in that area, your only chance for a Bluegrass beer might be while passing through the Cincinnati or Louisville airports.

“It’s great visibility for us,” Hagan says.
And it’s a great diversion for weary travelers.

Andrew Oppmann, executive editor of The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., is filling in as Beer Man while the search for a new columnist
continues. If you are interested in the job, e-mail us at beerman(AT)postcrescent.com