Against The Grain Brewery & Smokehouse

Louisville, again. It’s been some years and then some years the time before that. Davo said, “We should pre-game the Cleveland-Detroit beer & baseball trip in Indianapolis”. I told him, “The pre-game for the Cleveland-Detroit beer & baseball trip is going to be Cincy, and by that, I mean Louisville & Cincy”. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but yes, I concede that mistakes were made. Like adding Indianapolis into the mix between those 2, yeah, that just kind of happened. And generally, the pre-game is just 2 days but we set about 5 days pre-game this time around, meaning that we’ll be junk by the time we hit Cleveland for the actual Detroit beer & baseball trip to begin...

Located on the end of the stadium, in an old train station or so I’m told. We walked much further to get here than we should have, in my opinion. Navigated the outside seating pen and wait, the front windows around the entrance door are pasted with stickers, be careful, it may be a murder brewery (fool me once….) In and push to the rear, an ‘L’ shaped wood topped bar laminated, vertical corrugated panels, and a foot bar off to the left. Seating for 18 on them squared stools. A pair of 5 tap beer can handled stainless ‘T’ towers along the bar, and another panel with taps around the bend on the barback wall with sampler paddles racked.

Barback holds tiered booze glow lit, a slushy machine, shelved stuff, and a beer board listing style descriptors (Session, Hop, Malt, Whim, Dark, & Smoke) and just the names of the beers in those buckets in alt colored print. My first impression was, ‘how lazy are you?’ But then I spied the coherent Untapped board on the back wall and that made sense of things; Beer (draft, can, & bottles), style, ABV, IBU, calories (yes, calories), and origin (which is ‘Louisville, Kentucky’ for everything, so I’m not sure why they bothered even listing that).

Worn wood floors, and a large vaulted ceiling that extends beyond this space into a shared courtyard of sorts. I’m talking arched wood plank ceiling way the fuck up high. Beige & burgundy walls (in this light) below brick upppers with rows of windows, and phat green I-beam uprights, cross beams, & ductwork, too. Colorful mural on the far wall below a set of doublewide flats, and a cool brewing equipment mural forward of there. Flats over the bar showing game & game, and large panel windows above display copper ‘Fermentation Vessels’ up there on the 2nd floor and a copper Brew Kettle & Mash Tun on the 3rd floor. Drop pan lamps over the bar and adjacent long shared table, and track spots everywhere else. Merch & beer to go room off the front doorway. Some corner shelving with cans, bottles, trophies, and pieces. Framed prints of people I don’t know over the back exit to the stadium and forward to the front doors, and some art otherwise good & bad. The good art: a print of Colonel Sanders feeding chicken to chickens. The bad Art: the logo print for ‘The Brown Note’ Brown Ale (stay classy, Louisville).

We sat a long hightop with stools for 24 just off the bar, and then there’s nearly a dozen and a half more tables about the room; squares and recs and some on shared back wall bench. Also, the aforementioned seating out front, picnics penned umbrella’d up, and cornhole, too.

12 beers up, some of a bunch of different things. 7 flagships (The Brown Note, American Brown Ale, 5.8%; A Beer, American Light Lager, 4.5%; Cold Ass Beer, Red Ale, 4.3%; 35K, Milk Stout, 7%; Loo-A-Vuhl Pale, American Pale Ale, 5.5%; Citra Ass Down, DIPA, 8.2%; Bourbon Barrel Ale, 7.2%) and rotating things (Bang Brau Rauchbier, 5.3%; Rico Sauvin, DIPA, 9%; Sol Mate, Citrus Wheat Ale, 5.7%; Double Loo, DIPA, 9.5%; Proof There it is, Blonde Ale, 4.8%), + a spread of cans (amongst them a Festbier, Barleywine, and Schwarzbier) & bottles.

Might have sampled a few as I do (Cold Ass Beer, Red Ale, mild, a little sweet, really not much to it; Bang Brau, Rauchbier, plastic and band-aidy like phenolic; The Brown Note, Brown Ale, chocolate, a bit sweet, nutty, some nice roasty notes; Sol Mate, Citrus Wheat Ale, citrus like orange juice, or maybe a wit gone wrong; Loo-A-Vuhl Pale, American Pale Ale, yes hazy, but not unpleasant. Brown Ale for the Win, and the American Pale Ale behind it).

Fewd, as it’s late and is necessary. A bowl of Cincy chili (cinnamon, but no spaghetti), and wings done house dry rub, which were perfect. (Evil) Davo said his turkey melt was good and that the Brussel Sprouts were great which is not even possible as they are an awful vegetable (I can attest to the fact that they smelled like ass).

Trivia night, which we will ignore. This place is dead now on a Thursday night, but I’m sure jams on game day. Food was good but the beers were meh and some of them seemingly off. Oh, and 3 DIPAs at 8%+ but no regular old IPA? Like, really? I know this brewery to be better than what we saw. Just a disappointment.

This place was cool. Next to the baseball stadium in a decent sized brick building with high ceilings and some foeders visible through glass windows. Nachos were pretty good, and there were plenty of Against the Grain beers on tap.

Visited on a Thursday asfternoon before dinner. Sat at the bar. Kylie was our server.

 

Visited with my wife in fall of 2022. Cool building right next to Louisville Slugger Field. Beers are above average. They also have a large variety of whiskey available. Service was great. We had the pork nachos, which were excellent

 

Ate a quick dinner and couple of beers here on a Sunday night (we got into town late and they were the only place still open). Ate at one of the big picnic tables out on the sidewalk. They had a dozen beers on tap, a mix of their standard beers and some limited releases that I assumed were draft only. Beers that I drank onsite and bought cans of were pretty good. BBQ food menu, our food was pretty good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wide variety of common and experimental beers. Great smokehouse meats. Service can be iffy

 

 

 

worth a stop if in louisville. the one offs were the most interesting. one pf the best breweries in driving distance.

Connected to the Louisville Slugger Museum and baseball field, which was unfortunately closed when I was there. Nice brewery and bar, which also has a decent selection of bourbons, which comes as no surprise in the heart of bourbon country. As it also has a restaurant, it can get be fairly bustling. The food in said restaurant is very good. Get the pork belly.

 

 

It ls located near a minor league ballpark and along with Angels Envy probably the biggest draw for the area. The inside is standard exposes duct work warehouse feel. Plenty of seats. The quality of the food and beer is above average. The service was very kind and attentive. There is plenty of different types of beer to choose from. The food menu is smoke meat leaning. The food is very good....brussel sprout by far was the best I had.

The smoke house is attached to the Louisville Ball Park. The place was not busy due to the off season, I bet it is hopping' on game day. The on tap selection was small when we were there in December 2017. One brew f each type of beer. The beer is go though. Stop by if in Louisville. Right downtown.

 

 

 

My wife and I visited this brewery on the Sunday night before Labor Day. The brewery is located in a baseball stadium on Main Street. Open, with plenty of room, it was busy when we arrived. We had a flight and enjoyed nearly all the beers. The place was decorated with unusual art, swag from the local soccer team and a few hidden references to 'Silance of the Lambs'. Worth a visit. We didn't have any food.

The beers here are pretty standard. They're well made, but not much to write home about. They get a lot of hype, but I think it's just good marketing. The food is pretty good, and it's definitely worth dropping by if you're going to a ball game.

 

 

I had samples of their whim, smoke, and watermelon kolsch. I wasn't really interested in any of those, so i went with the session.

 

 

 

 

Had an enjoyable time here. Service was great. Atmosphere was OK, a bit sterile for a brewery. Board with beers on tap was very hard to understand. Citra Ass Down was excellent. Will try food next time.