Baylor the new-alBanian Brewer

From Amanda Arnold in the C-J, a nice piece on my buddy/acquaintance Roger Baylor...

...different styles of beer from around the globe, an education partly derived from studying the menu of more than 200 bottled beers and more than a dozen international taps, but also from talking with company co-owner Roger A. Baylor....

Besides educating patrons, Baylor, 48, contributes beer or beer sampling certificates to numerous charitable events in the Louisville area, including the Brew at the Zoo and the Carnegie Center's annual "A Taste for Art and History" fundraiser.

At the samplings, he serves as a personal guide, teaching participants about the history of brewing, the different types of beer and the process of making it.

"What I want them to walk away with is knowledge on not so much the process but the different styles of beer," Baylor said. "If they have a brown ale and liked it, they know to look for brown ales."

Baylor, a 1982 philosophy graduate of Indiana University Southeast, developed a passion for beer while backpacking through Europe later that decade....

In 1994, he became co-owner of a local pizza business that soon expanded to Rich O's at 3312 Plaza Drive, New Albany -- and the beer list grew with it.

That evolved in 2002 into the New Albanian Brewing Co., now a four-barrel operation, that was New Albany's first brewery since 1935....

In November, Baylor and his partners plan to expand by opening the New Albanian Bank Street Brewing Co. in the former Rainbow Bread building. That will be a 15-barrel brewery, enabling the launch of a broader, regional distribution in February....