Brown's Tastee Beer Cheese

One from our Transylvania Gentlemen blog:

I was making my rounds yesterday and stopped into Pisgah to see a man about a horse, and you know I can't go to Pisgah without dropping into my favorite donut shop in the solar system, Doughdaddy's.

This day found me desirous of something savory in addition to my customary box o' cream cheese covered donuts, and so I reached into their beer cheese cooler. They have an admirable selection of Kentucky beer cheeses, including several I've never tried, and the duck selected Brown's Tastee Beer Cheese. The package says they're based in Versailles, but their website says Lawrenceburg. Either way, both fine towns with a beer cheese to be Kentucky-Proud of.

As regular readers must know, the only yardstick by which to measure the greatness of a beer cheese is The Johnny Scale, meaning, how close is it to Johnny Allman's original formula? Friends, it's right up there near the top, alongside River Rat (whose package bears the slogan "Just Like Johnny's") and the new Allman's Beer Cheese which revives Johnny's recipe, thanks to his grandson's noble efforts.

Brown's Tastee meets my core criteria:

1. It's delicious.
2. It's spicy-hot but not stupidly so.
3. It contains beer. (You'd be surprised how many wannabe beer cheese's dont!) However, the beer does not dominate the flavor, nor does the garlic, which is as it should be.
4. It has an approximation of the correct texture, for which there is no word to adequately convey. "Fibrous" doesn't sound right, and "grainy" comes closer but still misleads. But the texture is there.

And when you put it in the freezer with the lid off - not long enough to freeze it solid but just long enough to give it an extra crystalline surface veneer - and knife it into small paper ketchup-cups, it succeeds as a simulacra of what my childhood mind (I had both "photographic memory" and synethesia as a tot) recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s during my visits to Johnny's with my parents.

The texture issue is what often trips up other leading contenders for Allmanesque greatness. Kentucky Ale Beer Cheese, on the other hand, has the texture down, but tastes very different from Johnny's because of the addition of mustard powder to the proceedings. The beer cheese one was served at Johnny's was not quite as spread-like and dip-like as what you buy in a tub today - the nudging of the formula towards being a spread comes from emulation of Hall's, which for many years was the reigning beer cheese in supermarkets, but had a completely version for retail as compared to the actual restaurant's.

Allman's Beer Cheese

Beer cheese lovers and Boonesboro historians rejoice! The ghost of the birthplace of beer cheese, Johnny Allman's Restaurant, comes back to haunt the 21st century, thanks to Johnny's grandson Ian and the original formula for Johnny's historic beer cheese.

That's right, you heard right, Allman's Beer Cheese is back! According to their website:

Johnny Allman began his historical restaurant career in the late 1930's on the banks of the Kentucky river near Boonesborough. After retiring as a captain in the Kentucky Highway Patrol (and personal aid to two Kentucky governors) , he opened his first restaurant, The Driftwood Inn. It was here that Johnny and his cousin Joe developed the first batch of beer cheese ever made.

Johnny moved his site of operation to the site of present day Hall's Restaurant in the early 1940's and after a while sold the business to Carl Johnson. Upon the sale, he agreed to stay out of the restaurant business on the river for five years. During this time away from the river he opened The Smokehouse on US 25 in Madison county near the Blue Grass Army Depot during the Korean War. After that location he moved to North Broadway in Lexington to open an Allman's Restaurant during the construction of IBM. He again sold that restaurant and moved for the last time back to the Kentucky river and built on a site located between his two previous locations. Johnny ran this last Allman's Restaurant until 1978 when the business burned and he retired. The last genuine Allman's beer cheese was served at this location.

In the past thirty-odd years many versions of beer cheese have popped up on store shelves and on the tables of regional restaurants. But now, "the beer cheese that started it all" is available again in its original unaltered recipe made by Johnny's grandson Ian Allman. Thirty years hasn't changed a thing. Allman's Beer Cheese is owned and operated by Ian Allman and his wife Angie who reside in Rockcastle County.

This is a brand-new product launch, so distribution is just getting started. Right now it's only available at Better Beef on Chestnut St. in Berea, but I expect that's all about to change shortly. I haven't tried it yet, but am eager to get my hands of a tub of it and will no doubt be raving about it here soon.

Johnny Allman's Restaurant

Johnny Allman's Restaurant was located along the Kentucky River in Boonesboro, not far from the present location of Hall's Restaurant. From the 1940s to the 1970s, it was a immensely well-loved spot, with mobsters, businessmen, bikers and "river rats" side by side, enjoying the fine food and the fine view overlooking the river. Even Sweet Evening Breeze was a regular diner there (and sometimes caused a stir by choosing to use the men's restroom).

Beer Cheese was invented at Allman's Restaurant in the 1940s. There are many who would have you believe that Hall's invented it. They did not. Today Hall's offers a very similar, but not quite the same version of Beer Cheese in their restaurant. The "Hall's Snappy Spread" sold commercially in stores is a totally different formula and nothing like what you get in the actual restaurant.

Allman's went up in a gigantic fire in the 1970s. I'll never forget the day my family and I drove down there about 6pm for dinner, only to find nothing left but a charred skeleton of the building, still smoldering. Allman's was such an institution that it was unthinkable that they wouldn't rebuild. So everyone waited. And waited. But the new Allman's never came.

All that remains now are the memories of that Beer Cheese that can never be tasted again, and scraps of effluvia such as those pictured here. We are attempting to track down pictures of the restaurant in its heyday. Do you have photos of Allman's Restaurant? Please e-mail us if so!

Did I say their beer cheese could never be tasted again? Well, that's not exactly true. Bob Tabor of Winchester is keeping the original Allman's recipe alive with his River Rat Beer Cheese which started out available strictly in the central Kentucky area but now is branching out all over the state. When I first tasted it, I almost cried. It is indeed, as their slogan states, "Just Like Johnny's".