Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET

Behold, the new automated Victory Growler Filler poised to fill a growler…

My growler! See how delighted by it all young Leah looks?

Now watch, as she pushes all the right buttons….

Was it good for you too?

Meanwhile, down at the other end of the bar, the place that will become known as Ruch’s Corner, Liz is cleaning to a glass…

Note that she is not up to her elbows in soapy water in some ratty old tub behind the bar…

..and we can zoom right in to see the tiny bubbles at work.

Is this a great world, or what?

I was, god help my weak, weak soul, back out at Victory on Saturday afternoon to see all this wonderfulness happening and to accept (appropriate, sadly) abuse from Patrick (I used to have to actually work!) Mullin and the afore-referenced Richard (Still Here After All These Years!) Ruch for not having properly cared for my fine German flip-top growler, being unaware that you could actually remove the rubber gasket on the ceramic “cork” and clean it. Bad Me.

The place was slammed!

All the built-up, desperate needs of the regulars who had spent six weeks in the wastelands were unleashed to the point where all the restaurant tables will filled and there was a line in the foyer and out the front door when I left around 4:30. There were even two little kids being used as doorstops to ease the flow of traffic (would have gotten a photo but my arms were filled with my growler (10 Years Alt) and sixpacks of Storm King and the Alt again to accompany me to Idaho this weekend).

All the bar seats were filled and people were standing at the wall rails and behind seated companions as well. It looks like this renovation thing might have been a really good idea. Who knew?

We did discover one design flaw in the bar setup, however. The seat Ruch had chosen to be his (management has instructed him he must move to the right and most visible side of the bar so he can be seen from a distance by people coming in the new entranceway because, much like they would bring their children to the zoo, many parents used to walk their younger them by his former stool whenever they came in for dinner to point out “that strange old man” to delighted childish giggles, and this new location makes it possible for them to continue that tradition merely by pointing across the room) , was clearly selected with a purpose–for him to be able to see the large television screen mounted over the middle of the bar.

There are two other vintage copper domes from old German brewing tanks installed in the new restaurant aside from the one which hovers over the Brewmaster’s Table. They have been cut in half and placed over either end of the bar and over two booths in the long, narrow family dining section where the old bar use to be. They are neat and eye-catching but, at the bar, the halves are also in the line of sight for roughly eight to ten seats at either end for that big TV screen at the center.

The three potential solutions to the problem: move the current screen out farther from the wall which would make it visible to more, if not all, seats; have Ruch himself move further down to one of the seats without a sight line as a symbolic gesture that it really doesn’t matter all that much, or– his own adamant suggestion (having rejected #2 with a snort and a muttered “I can always go to Earth, Bread & Brewery, you know”)–install two smaller screens beneath the larger one, positioned so they can be seen from the seats under the half-kettle tops.

With Ruch getting crankier and argumentative like this in his declining years, there is talk he will eventually be replaced with a lifelike (it isn’t like it’ll have to move very much, just a upward bent elbow every 30 seconds or so) and vocal (”slow pour” is the only vocabulary required) android as the final step in the Great Renovation. This was always the plan in the long run, but now it might be Sooner rather than Later.

Hey, if they’ll let Joe Meloney truck it up to Sly Fox for a Monday Night Tasting a couple of times a month for old times sake, I think we got a done deal.

Tags: Beer, Brewpubs //