It began on the banks of the Kentucky River at Boonesboro after Prohibition and near the end of the Great Depression.
Johnnie Allman, a retired state trooper, had a little restaurant called The Driftwood Inn, and he began serving his cousin Chef Joe Allman’s “snappy” beer-and-cayenne-flavored cheese spread to get customers to drink more beer.
According to legend, Johnnie lost the restaurant and the recipe to Carl Johnson in a card game. But his son, Johnnie B. Allman, said “there’s no truth to that.”
Allman said his father simply sold the business to Johnson and agreed not to compete with him for five years. He later started a restaurant in Lexington, then moved back to Boonesboro, where he established Allman’s Restaurant as a popular hangout in the 1960s and 70s. Johnson in turn sold his business and recipes to the owners of what is now Hall’s on the River. That’s how Hall’s and Allman’s Beer Cheese, which is operated by Johnnie B.’s son Ian and his wife Angie, can both claim to have the original recipe. And they aren’t the only ones who make that claim.
“People worked at different places and carried it around,” Johnnie B. said of the recipe. “Everybody on the river had beer cheese at one time.”
What is beyond dispute is that Clark County is the Birthplace of Beer Cheese. The Kentucky legislature decreed it in 2013, four years after Winchester First established the country’s only Beer Cheese Festival.
Every year, the city closes off Main Street, and 20,000 people descend on downtown to mingle, sample beer cheese, listen to live music, imbibe cold beverages, eat barbecue and ribeye, shop for crafts, and enjoy themselves.
Buck Winburn, formerly lead singer and rhythm guitarist for Homer Ledford and the Cabin Creek Boys, was among the multitude of festival-goers last Saturday.
“This is my hometown, and I love beer cheese,” he said.
Winburn waxed nostalgic as he remembered.
“I knew Johnnie Allman and all of the old-timers,” he said, recalling the days of his youth at Allman’s, Cornett’s, Hall’s, and other places on the river.
Winburn lives in Estill County now but returns to Winchester for the festivals.
The Beer Cheese Festival is something of a homecoming for many former residents and an attraction for locals and tourists alike.
Adam Hicks and his wife, Paige, who live in Lexington, were among this year’s visitors. Adam grew up in Winchester, where his mother was an educator and his father an agriculture agent, and his wife works for a law firm here.
“It’s a fun time,” Adam said of the festival.
He was impressed by the vitality of the downtown.
“It’s interesting to see how things have changed,” he said.
Bella Castro lives in Winchester and likes attending the festival each year.
“It has something for everybody. I like the food, the people, the sense of community, all of it,” she said.
And the beer cheese?
“It’s yummy!” she said.
This year’s Beer Cheese Festival was the first for Alexandra Quisenberry of Richmond, but it won’t be the last.
“I like it. I’ll be back,” she said.
It was also the first for Adrian Blankenship of Georgetown, who stood on the High Side of Main Street listening to a concert and watching people lined up in front of the courthouse to buy beer cheese.
“It’s kind of overwhelming,” he said. “All the vendors I’ve visited are really nice. It’s people-friendly. The music is great. Great vibes. Good beer. And I like the beer cheese competition.”
The competition, which began in 2009 as a fundraiser for Winchester First, the city’s Main Street program, is the main event.
There are contests for professional and amateur “beer cheesers,” and there’s also a People’s Choice award in the pro category.
The amateur contest, which had 25 entries this year, is sponsored by the Clark County Homemakers.
“It’s a blind judging,” said Kim Bugg, a volunteer for the festival, who was working the sales table in front of the courthouse.
The cheeses are numbered, and the judges don’t know who the contestants are. There are different sets of judges for the amateur and professional contests.
For the second year in a row, 2 Rivers Beer Cheese won first place in the professional contest. Bootlegger Beer Cheese, last year’s People’s Choice, came in second place for the second year, and Double D’s Beer Cheese placed third and was this year’s People’s Choice winner.
In the amateur contest, this year’s winners were Tonya Willoughby, first place; Michele Sidwell, second place; and Steve Childers, third place.
Bugg said that only the judges got to taste the amateur recipes. The professional vendors were allowed to sell theirs because they have government-inspected kitchens and food licenses.
Cameron Correll, marketing and events director of Winchester First, said that although the beer cheeses are somewhat similar, they are not the same.
“It’s cold-pack cheese, your choice of beer . . . and cayenne pepper. But then people start doing crazy things to it, and that’s where it gets a little different,” she said.
Correll said there were some changes this year that made the festival better.
One big change was that there was a Beer Cheese Festival app, and people could buy their tickets digitally before they arrived and skip the lines. Or, if they preferred, they could buy scannable cards on site.
“Two-thirds of the ticket sales were done ahead of the festival on the app,” Correll said.
The other big change was that instead of having the Beer Cheese Boulevard down the middle of Main Street, the tables with the samples were moved to the rear of the courthouse square.
“That worked out so nicely,” Correll said. “It gave people an opportunity to see the arts and crafts vendors without it getting too congested. And people who wanted to sample the beer cheese weren’t crowded into a half block. They had lots of space.”
“I think we definitely learned some things that we’re going to tweak for next year,” Correll said, but the digital ticket sales and separate area for the samples are probably here to stay.
Correll mentioned that all of the money from the sales goes to fund the Main Street program and downtown development. None of it is for administrative costs.
“Everything we take in is reinvested in the town,” she said.
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Because the weather for this year’s festival was ideal – warm but not steamy – there was a large crowd throughout the day. Correll said they sold about 2,000 tickets and estimated that about 10 percent of visitors buy tickets for the tasting.
“Twenty thousand is about what we normally see, but I’d say this crowd was comparable to that, if not more,” she said.
It’s possible to buy beer cheese from the Carolinas to California, and it’s said that the late Queen Elizabeth II took a large supply back to England with her after visiting her thoroughbreds near Lexington. But the snappy spread Joe Allman is credited with inventing is mostly a Kentucky thing – it is nearly ubiquitous throughout the Bluegrass State.
It’s especially prevalent in Clark County, where many families have their own homemade recipes, nearly every country store sells it, and restaurants and bars not only serve it, but have a Beer Cheese Week in early June to compete with their own beer cheese-flavored entrees and hors d’oeuvres.
Joe and Johnnie and the other “old-timers” would probably be astounded to see how what they started has grown into something of a phenomenon.
