Indianapolis Welcomes Tow Yard Brewing
Tow Yard Brewing opens it’s doors for the first time this weekend for their soft launch! Located near my favorite Colts tailgating spot, the brewery is housed in the old Chateau Thomas Winery Building at at 501 S. Madison Ave. Here’s a slideshow I created from their image posts on Twitter. Make sure and drop by to try their Emerald Circle IPA, Goldie Hops American Style Golden Ale, Hook Up Shandler, and Horse Power Double Pale Ale.
Daredevil’s 1 Year Anniversary Revisited
Daredevil’s 1 Year Anniversary Events were a blast. 6 locations, 6 “Raredevil” releases, and a very special food pairing at Black Market. If you weren’t able to make any of these events, Daredevil released a Raspberry, Blackberry, and Cherry Muse, Slip Stream Pale Ale, Mr. 300 Man American Barleywine, and Char Imperial Smoked Dark Mild. Some of my favorites were Slip Stream Pale Ale, Char Imperial Smoked Dark Mild, and the Cherry Muse. Of the 6 events, my favorite was the food pairing at Black Market. It was a very intimate setting, with only 55 seats available for the event. The meal included four courses:
- Course 1: Indiana Perch Ceviche served with Carnival Saison
- Course 2: Red Curry Poutine served with Liftoff IPA.
- Course 3: Glazed Pork Cheeks with Baked Herb Polenta with Char Imperial Smoked Dark Mild
- Course 4: Fried Waffle Batter with Citrus Fruit Preserves and Mr. 300 American Barleywine
Indy Beer News was also there doing a live podcast right from Black Market. It’s a great interview with Daredevil Brewing’s Bill Ballenger, Mike, and Shane Pearson. Limited glassware was also provided for each of these events including Daredevil pint and tulip glasses. Here’s a link to the Indy Beer News podcast.
The Magnificent Multitude of Beer
Pop Chart Lab has created the mother of all beer taxonomy posters! The aptly titled “The Magnificent Multitude of Beer” is incredibly detailed. Each beer style is linked divided into Ale and Lager, then to individual style, an example, and finally the glass it should be served in. Well done! It looks like they took their original “Very Many Varieties of Beer” and continued to add to it. This 60″ x 40″ poster will surely be the envy of your beer enthusiast friends. Check out our previous post on Pop Chart Lab here.
CANvitational Revisited
Great times at Sun King CANvitational. We got to sample some great canned beer and help support the Arts Council of Indianapolis Power2Give. What a great day for a beer festival! Perfect weather, good food, and of course beer. Well done!
Cigar and Beer Tasting Revisited
Our first Cigar and Beer Pairing was one of our smoothest tastings to date. Many thanks to Ryan and Jenny Kraner for taking this idea and running with it. I’m sure there were countless hours of research going into this :). I’d also like to thank Eric Cole for hosting the event. Such a great time! CAO Gold Corona Gordo cigars were paired with Saison Dupont, Franziskaner Weissbier Dunkel, Triton Magnificent Amber, and John Henry Colonial Cream & Brown Ale (one of my favorites). Some homebrew also made an appearance including BIMP’s Wheat Wine, Super Duper Cuker (Wheat Wine w/ Cucumber), and FIC Bier (Dunkel Weisse). Each beer was sampled before lighting the cigar, and then again while smoking it. You’d be amazed at how the flavor characteristics of each beer morphed throughout the process. Lighter beers were sampled first, and moved towards darker/heavier/stronger beers towards the end. All around great event!
UpCup 2013 Revisited
UpCup 2013 was a blast this year. Beer Is My Passion had four entries including an American Barleywine (Kyle Alder), an English IPA Spruce Beer (Michael Mustin), a Wood Aged Old Ale (Erik Howell), and a Southern English Brown (Jenn Myers). Upland really knows how to host an awesome homebrewing event. This is by far my favorite competition of the year. We all enjoyed Upland beer on tap, good conversation with brewers from around the state, and awesome food catered by Upland. This year’s UpCup winner was homebrewer and beer judge Thomas Wallbank of the Indianapolis Foam Blowers with a Berliner Weisse. He’ll have his name added on the UpCup trophy with the other winners, and he’ll get to keep it until next year’s competition. Second place went to Ron Smith’s Saison, also a Foam Blower and beer judge. I’m very happy to announce that our own Jenn Myers ended up taking third place with her 221b Baker St. Southern English Brown this year 🙂 If you happen to bump into her make sure to congratulate her. We’re all super proud of her!
Here’s Jenn just after they announced she had taken third place.
Jenn received a free case of any Upland beer of her choice out of Upland’s massive beer cave. Rad Red? Don’t mind if I do 🙂
We all had an awesome time, and as you can see from some of the pictures there may have even been some kung fu fighting in the parking lot 🙂 BIMP later took the party to The Tap for some celebratory brews.
Indiana City Grand Opening
The grand opening at Indiana City was a lot of fun. Food trucks, music, and good beer. I got the opportunity to try each beer yesterday, and they were all pretty solid. My personal favorite of the day was the Shadowboxer Oatmeal Stout. Yacht Rock Belgian Wheat was also pretty smooth. Some would say Kenny Loggins smooth!
Indiana City Brewing Opens Tomorrow!
This Saturday, Indiana City Brewing Company will be opening it’s doors to the public. Located at 24 Shelby St., the brewery taproom will be pouring pints and filling growlers of Yacht Rock, Shadowboxer, and Beyond the Pale. However, Indiana City won’t be the first brewery housed in the historic brick building at Shelby and East Washington. This location used to be the Home Brewing Company building, a brewery and beer bottling company that distributed beer throughout Indianapolis. The Home Brewing Company, founded in 1891, produced over 50,000 barrels of beer a year in it’s prime. They also owned several saloons in the Indianpolis area.
Sensing Prohibition legislation, the HBC tried staying ahead of the curve. They made attempts at manufacturing malt extract and also marketing “homo” or “same” beer (a very low alcoholic beer). Unfortunately, neither products were successful and like many breweries in America The Home Brewing Company closed their doors soon after Prohibition. This building is full of history, and Indiana City could not have picked better venue to open a brewery. Tomorrow at 2pm, Indiana City Brewery will be opening their doors for their grand opening and also adding a new chapter to the history 24 Shelby Street. See you there!
Big Brew Day at Great Fermentations Revisted
Big Brew Day at Great Fermentations turned out to be a winner. Rain was expected in the forecast for the event, but after some slight spitting during the morning hours the sun decided to stick around the rest of the day. There were several notable events throughout the day including a brewing equipment “garage sale”, an introductory cheesemaking class, an off flavor seminar, Ask-A-Judge, and a class on making Sour beer. BBQ’n Fools was churning out some pretty fantastic smoked food including some excellent smoked bratwursts. At 1:00pm over 40 attendees participated in a global toast given by Mayor Greg Ballard. GF staff counted 25 batches brewed right in their parking lot, including a batch of mead. BIMP brewed a Wheat Wine and Dunkelweizen.
Although we were brewing somewhat outside of our comfort zones, GF offered burners, propane, filtered/RO water, and even a mobile wort chilling station (two daisy chained counterflow chillers, a couple of pumps, and a cart for transferring your hot wort to the chillers) to ease the stress of brewing away from your home setup. Another perk was that if you forgot any supplies or ingredients (WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!! ;)) all you had to do was head into the shop. We had a great time and wanted to thank Great Fermentations for putting on event, and everyone that hung out and celebrated National Homebrew Day with us. We are definitely looking forward to a bigger and better Big Brew next year!