Dogfish Head Kick Off

In case you missed the news last week, Dogfish Head Brewery out of DE is back in Indiananpolis! Zink Distribution has brought them back to our fair city and we want to welcome them with true Hoosier hospitality. Check out the release party line-up! We hope to see you at one or two of these.

Ralston’s Drafthouse: Wednesday, October 15th  from 7:30 to close. They’ll introduce all 15 DFH beers currently available in the Indianapolis Market. 635 Massachusetts Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46204

Twenty Tap: Thursday, October 16th  from 5:30 to close. 5406 N College Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46220

Yard Line: Thursday, October 16th from 6:00 to close. 6466 E 82nd  Street, Indianapolis, IN 46250

Friday, October 17th  Fountain Square Block Party!!! Like a proper block party it will go on all day. The beer will flow nonstop during normal business hours.

Block Party Headquarters:

• La Margarita – 1043 Virginia Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46203. We’ll enjoy DFH’s finest paired with the traditional family recipes La Margaritas is known for.
• Thunderbird – 1127 Shelby St. Indianapolis, IN 46203. We’ll not only enjoy the finest ales from DFH, but we’ll also experience the DFH cocktails created by the gifted mixologists at Thunderbird.

Lets give Dogfish Head a warm welcome and go check out some good beer!

CANvitational 2014

After having such a great time at CANvitational last year, I was pretty excited for this year. The weather was perfect and Georgia Street is just an amazing venue. It's cool to be drinking downtown with the city all around you.

For those of you who don't know, CANvitational is a festival hosted by Sun King that celebrates canned beer throughout the craft community. This brings beers from all around the US to our beautiful city. It's an awesome opportunity to try some beers that aren't distributed in the area. If you are new to beer, or haven't spent hours walking through a liquor store while on vacation this festival is a must attend.

Some of my personal favorite breweries like Cigar City, Rhingeist and Surly bring their basic lineups and now with the invention of crowlers, large cans that replace 32 oz growlers, some of these breweries were able to bring special releases. The special releases were the one thing that this festival was missing last year.

Since this is Sun King's festival they had better bring their A game. Lucky for us they did a great job. Sun King showed up with a couple different King's Reserve beers including one of my personal favorites Lonesome Dove. They also brought Grapefruit Jungle. Although this is an awesome beer, it was a little bit long in the tooth by now. I appreciate that they were trying to bring something special but I feel bad for anyone who had old GFJ as their introduction to the beer.

For me, one of the highlight was this year's collaboration which was with Solemm Oath out of Naperville, IL. Solemn Oath is known for bringing awesome Belgian flavors to inventive American beers. They called the collaboration, 30 Minute Coma, a Belgian session IPA. The beer was outstanding. The beer was light and summery with a nice American citrus hop flavor and a light Belgian yeast character. It was a nice blend of the two styles and had a great IPA punch even though it was a lighter beer. As fall is just around the corner and it's already getting colder here in IN, I'm not sure that I would have gone with a session beer, but at least it will be the best tailgate beer in the cooler.

I liked last year's Royal Brat collaboration with Three Floyds but I think this one is even better. Be on the lookout! this beer was released on Monday the 22nd in the Sun King tasting room. It's worth the trip to the brewery to make sure that you don't miss out on this awesome beer.

Other than Sun King these were my three favorite beers (in no particular order) that I hadn't had before:

• Country Western II, a brown ale with Kentucky sorghum and aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels. brewed in collaboration by two awesome breweries in Lexington, Country Boy and West 6
• Smog Rocket by Beavertown... with a name like that I had a hard time taking the brewery seriously but great lightly smoked beer. You can call yourself whatever you want if you brew beer like 
• 10 Ton and Flying Rye by Warped Wing out of Dayton OH. Maybe I cheated a little bit here but they were both great beers. I am pumped to try and set up a trip to check this brewery out in person. Both of the brews were great and the people were great.

I was worried this festival would have a tough time staying fresh. Most of the breweries bring their basic lineups that you can find throughout their markets. This isn't bad but I worry about exciting beers coming to the fest. With the advent of the Crowler and all the new breweries that start canning every year I don't think this will be a problem.

On the only really negative note, it was silly that Sun King didn't have enough tasters with 2014 on them. At the price point we pay to go to events we shouldn't be ok with stupid things like this. I know the beer is important not the glass, but this isn't a cheap festival. They need to take a lesson from Daredevil's Hops and Flip-Flops festival and not slack off on the attendee experience.

The festival was poop yourself good this year!

If you were there you get that... lol

Professor Beer:
While the CANvitational tends not to get many special or seasonal beers, there is an impressively large contingent of out-of-state breweries in attendance.  This festival is a great opportunity to try beers that are not easy to get ahold of if you do most of your drinking in Indiana.  DC Brau Brewing Company brought their own excellent music (they were playing Oysterhead the first time I stopped by their tent).

Sun King had a couple of their King's Reserve beers available (Batch 666: Sympathy For The Devil and Lonesome Dove), as well as 30 Min. Coma, their collaboration with Solemn Oath Brewery of Naperville, IL.  Some other beers I remember enjoying:

• Country Western II - West Sixth Brewing / Country Boy - Lexington, KY
• Zombie Monkey - Tallgrass Brewing - Manhattan, KS
• Tiny Bomb - WISEACRE Brewing Co. - Memphis, TN

The Sessionable Trend

I've always been a fan of big beers. I like high alcohol content and big rich flavor, but recently it seems like it's starting to be cool to be small. Brewers throughout the craft movement like Goose Island, Penrose, Founders and our very own Flat 12, Scarlet Lane and Mashcraft are taking time to create something tasty while keeping the alcohol content light.

Session beers are not a style in themselves, they are just any ol' type of beer with lower alcohol content. There are a lot of numbers that people will throw around when they're describing exactly what the ABV has to be for the beer to be sessionable, basically its a really low abv beer that you can have multiples in one drinking session, hence session beer. I personally look for a good session beer to be about 4.5% ABV give or take a few decimals.

For those of you that don't know much about the brewing process, I'll break it down for you really quickly. Alcohol comes from the sugars that you pull off the grain. The more sugar you pull, the more sugar the yeast can eat and turn into alcohol. Session beers use less grains, and therefore less sugar, so while most of the sugar is turned into alcohol there are a lot of non-fermentables which is where our beer flavors come from. Normally this means that the less sugar we are pulling for alcohol the less flavor we are pulling for our beer as well. With session beers the trick has become pulling the right flavors to make a complex beer even with less sugar.

Brie and I sat down to talk with the owner of Penrose Brewing up in Geneva IL, my wife's home town. Penrose is doing Belgian inspired beers just outside the city of Chicago in the west suburbs. They have a staple beer called Proto Gratis, which is a Belgian Single. Around here we constantly see Belgian Doubels and Trippels and even the occasional Quad, but not a lot of people do singles. (When you think of these Belgian styles a doubel has higher ABV than a single, and a trippel has higher ABV than a doubel etc). The Proto Gratis came in at about 4% ABV, so it is very sessionable. When we talked with Eric, one of the brewery owners, he told us that he likes to keep their beers light, because light beers are easier to drink in the summer. When we asked about the session beer trend he really just had one thing to say, and that's "you have to brew with intent." It's more important to consider every single ingredient that goes into a beer when you're dealing with a smaller malt bill. There is just a smaller number of flavors to hide behind when you make such a small beer.

So why are session beers becoming all the rage this season??? Here are a few ideas of what might be contributing to the beer's popularity:

1. The challenge - a good session beer is hard to make because you have less to hide any flaws, like Eric at Penrose said you have to brew with intent. 
2. It's summer - people like to drink lighter beers in the summer
3. Hop shortage - session beers have a smaller malt bill so they need less hops to even them out and give them a big hoppy flavor
4. Price gauging - brewers can make a session beer with significantly less ingredients then a standard beer and normally charge similar prices to their flag ships
5. Session beers are approachable - as the industry matures we get more and more new beer drinkers and most session beers are a nice set of training wheels.

There are a lot of reasons your local brewery may be looking to make sessionable beers right now, let's just hope that all the brewers out there making beers are challenging themselves to brew with greater awareness of and consideration for what goes into the beer, using each ingredient deliberately. I understand that the brewing process stays the same and there is still a lot of hard work and care that goes into making a session beer, so there is definitely value there.

Although I still love big beers, I've found myself giving a lot of session beers a chance. Founder's All Day IPA has become one of my favorite beers for sitting outside and now that it comes in a 15 pack you can really drink it all day.

Cheers to enjoying a little summer fun without passing out in the front yard!

Taxman Brewing Company Preview

Last week, I had the opportunity to check out the new Taxman Brewing Co. in Bargersville, In. Taxman Brewing was hosting the Indiana chapter of Girls Pint Out and they were gracious enough to let me crash their party! Thanks Amanda and Leah!

These guys actually launched last year and have been producing some fantastic Belgian beers for almost a year now. That's right, Belgians. And that's all they brew. So much for your standard new brewery offerings of a blonde, pale ale, IPA and a stout. Taxman Brewing launched with The Standard (abbey blonde), La Maison (saison), Deduction (dubbel) and Exemption (tripel). Qualified (quad) was/is available in limited release. But, they haven't had a place to call home until recently. Taxman has been contracting with Cutters in Avon, In. while they work on their permanent space in Bargersville. And now that the final pieces are coming together, I'll tell you it's going to be one of the premier brewpubs in the southern half of the state.

They completely gutted an old building across from a couple railroad grain silos in this small, rural town. The whole place is decked out in salvaged barn wood mixed with a hard, industrial iron theme. Then, they more than doubled the size of the building adding a brand new brewhouse, coolers, outdoor patio, etc. And with 24 taps downstairs, 12 upstairs, there shouldn't be a lack of beer selection. Initially, expect 12 Taxman Brewing beers to be tapped with about as many guest taps, mainly focused on Indiana breweries.

This week, Taxman released a new fall seasonal, deFallt. Most of their beers have a tax/accounting theme based on a few of the owners being former accounts. deFallt is their autumn seasonal rendition of the Belgian Bière de Garde style, brewed as “beer to keep” over the summer for fall release.  Smooth and spicy French oak flavors blend with cinnamon and Indiana Hunter's Farm wildflower honey.

I didn't get to try deFallt while I was there last week, but hopefully it will be available on September 20th, when they celebrate the grand opening at the Bargersville location. They'll also be releasing Hop Collector, a Belgian style IPA. Be sure to check them out, the doors open at 11am. It will be 21+ only and they'll be serving food from a limited menu. Bargersville Fall Festival will also be happening in the town with live music, etc.

deFallt
Style: Bière de Garde
ABV: 7%
IBU: ~22 IBU
Description: French oak provides a warm, silky spice note with vanilla tones - less obvious and 'woody' than American oak, Beer is autumn amber in color and on style. Alcohol is typical of style; high alcohol traditionally helped preserve beer through the summer

Hop Collector
Style: Belgian IPA
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 65
Available: Very Limited
Description: Hop Collector is our Belgian twist on a traditional American style IPA. Amarillo and
Simcoe hops provide a bright aromatic nose of citrus, flowers and pine, complimented by moderate
bitterness. Traditional Belgian malts, candi sugar and unique Belgian esters finish off this complex
beer with a sparkling dryness. The Hop Collector has arrived and the coffers are overflowing.

CANvitational is this Weekend

Andrew and I have our tickets, and we're ready to hit up CANvitational this Saturday. Will we be seeing you there? To get some more information about the event, take a look at the press release below. If you're interested in learning more about the other breweries coming, Hoosier Beer Geek has done a great series highlighting the breweries and what you can expect to see poured. Maybe we'll bump in to you there!

SUN KING BREWERY IN INDIANAPOLIS TO HOST 2nd CANvitational CANNED CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL

THIS SAT, SEPTEMBER 20th

Indianapolis, Ind. (September 15, 2014) – In 2009, Sun King Brewery brought Indianapolis local beer for the first time since the Indianapolis Brewing Company closed its doors in 1948. Sun King will host the 2nd CANvitational canned craft beer festival this Saturday, Sept. 20 on the west block of Georgia Street, located in downtown Indy.

The Sun King CANvitational will bring over 40 craft breweries representing 23 states and international breweries to Georgia Street and Pan Am Plaza from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. (EST). Tickets, available online atwww.canvitational.com, are $60 for general admission day of the event and $75 for early entry. Sun King is running a $40 ticket special for advanced general admission ticket purchased online before August 31st. Event proceeds to benefit the Arts Council of Indianapolis.

The invited breweries were selected because of the quality of craft beer they are producing and, as the name of the event suggests, the festival will feature breweries that can their beers. Since craft beer’s inception in the 1980s, bottles have been the most commonly associated with craft beer. However, over the last decade the breweries featured at the CANvitational have been led a revival of craft canning and helped change the way people view cans.

New to this year’s festival, the CAN'd ART show on Friday, Sept. 19th located in the Indianapolis Arts Garden. A celebration of the CANvitational's partnership with the Indianapolis Arts Council and the unique art that adorns the cans we love. Local artists have selected a variety of cans from participating breweries attending the 2014 CANvitational and transformed them into reinvented pieces of art. Join participating brewers and artists in a reception where art and craft (beer that is) collide. Event tickets include complimentary appetizers and FRESH•LOCAL•BEER will be available. Tickets are very limited.

“We believe that cans are the best way to package beer and breweries from across the country, including a great number of highly respected and established breweries, have help affirm that idea by choosing to can their beer.” Said Sun King Co-Founder Clay Robinson. “Cans keep beer safe from two of beers greatest enemies, sunlight and oxygen, in a way that glass bottles can’t. Cans are also more environmentally friendly to make, transport and recycle, which is why so many breweries are currently making the choice to can.”

In addition to great, canned craft beer, attendees will have plenty of food options for purchase from food trucks that will line Georgia Street. Music will be provided throughout the event by DJ Helicon and DJ Action Jackson.

“We have invited our friends from across the country who share our passion for crafting world class beers and we are excited to showcase what they do and why we can.” Robinson added. “The most exciting part is that the majority of the beers available at the CANvitational aren’t even available in Indiana, which gives us the opportunity to provide a truly unique experience!”

-30-

About Sun King Brewing Company
Sun King Brewing Company is the brainchild of Dave Colt and Clay Robinson. With the help of family and friends – Omar Robinson, Andy Fagg and Steve Koers – the first keg of Sun King beer rolled out the door for delivery in July 2009. Now available on tap and in cans at over a thousand locations throughout Indiana, Sun King has grown into the second-largest beer brewer in the state. The company's commitment to handcrafted seasonal and specialty beers has been rewarded with multiple medals at the Indiana Brewers Cup, Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup competitions. Visit www.sunkingbrewing.comfor more information.

Indy Beer News, September 11th, 2014

Need a fix for Oktoberfest and Pumpkin beers? Check out Shoefly Public House.

Tomlinson Tap Room is filling Taxman Brewing Company grolwers for $10 leading up to the Taxman grand opening. 

18th Street Brewing has a new sour beer project. 

Black Acre is selling spots for a CSA program.

Upland's next sour lottery will take place fromOctober 2nd through the 9th. 

Plenty of events from Flat 12, Broad Ripple Brewpub, Two Deep Brewing, Mad Anthony's, Indy Eleven, Goose the Market, Triton Brewing Company and many more!

18th Street Brewery is Now Your Street

You may have started seeing 18th Street beers around the Indianapolis area, or more than likely you may have just missed it. 18th Street hit Indianapolis and it has been met with some serious excitement from the craft beer community. Their bottles were flying off the shelves in hours, not days, most of the time.

In the last months we've seen their Sinister DIPA, Coffee Hunter Stout and Undercrown IPA in liquor stores and even more hoppy treats on draft at bars and restaurants. I was lucky enough to score Jade Pale Ale at the Pint Room in Carmel earlier this week and it's a hell of a beer.

Since this summer's Bloomington Craft Beer Festival, I've been dying to go check out 18th Street Brewery in Gary, IN. There hasn't been a lot of reason for me to go to Gary, but I was near Three Floyds and figured what the hell. The brewery is a cool little shop in downtown, right by the train tracks. Inside is divided into two rooms. One is bright and clean with a very modern vibe. The other has street art on the walls and a cool urban vibe. The bar is big enough to serve a lot of people without taking over the space.

Their head brewer, Drew Fox, is relatively new to the craft beer world, deciding that he wanted to get into it in 2008. He has worked with brewers in Chicago like Pipeworks and Spiteful Brewing. Drew started a kickstarter in 2012 and launched the brewery from there. I normally don't love breweries going the kickstarter route, but I'm really upset I missed this one. I would have backed it in a heartbeat.

I was able to get Sinister and Undercrown in bottles here in Indy. Sinister is an awesome DIPA. Not that you can tell by my picture, but it pours out a beautiful orange-gold color with a thick white head. (Sorry for the picture it was the only 18th Street Brewery glass that I have.)

The aroma was like a punch of tropical fruit flavor with just a bit of citrus and pine. On first tasting you get a ton of tropical fruits like mangoes, pineapples and a little bit of dank resin flavor. The malt backbone is sweet and thick with a huge bitter punch of pine on the back end. The bitterness is that intense bitter that stays with you until you take your next sip. It hides the big alcohol content nicely and really does a great job of rounding out the sweet tropical start.

When drinking hoppy beers we often get stuck with one or two notes of flavor, but these guys have made an incredibly complex DIPA. The sweet balances so well with the fruity and the hoppy. I'm excited to make their offerings part of my fridge all the time.

I give it a 4.5/5

The bottles go fast, so if you hear that they're in stores get after them as fast as you can.

News from Scarlet Lane

Chris Knott will be parting ways with Scarlet Lane Brewing Company. Scarlet Lane has quickly become one of our favorite breweries around and Chris has done a lot of work to make sure they got off to the right start. Chris has been a great brewer with SLB as well as with the Ram befor that. We wish him luck in whatever brewery be works for next. We are also excited for SLB's continued success. 

Official release below.

McCordsville, Indiana – Scarlet Lane Brewing Company and Head Brewer Chris Knott have decided to part ways. Chris joined Scarlet Lane Brewing Company in January as Head Brewer. During his time at Scarlet Lane Brewing, Chris oversaw production of Dorian Stout, Vivian Red IPA and developed Saison de Silas. Chris was a significant part of Scarlet Lane’s achievement of three medals at the 2014 Indiana Brewers’ Cup after only being in operation for 2-months. 

“We launched this brewery with a clear set of goals on where we what to go as a business and what our overall vision is for the market. Starting a brewery is extremely stressful and requires a high level of teamwork at every turn.” Eilise Lane, CEO & Brewer says.  “It’s extremely important that we share an overall vision of the business strategy”. 

“Chris is an amazingly talented brewer and we wish him success in his future endeavors..” said Nick Servies, Founder and CBO.

In the meantime, Eilise Lane and Doug Sheets will continue production and brewery operations and development. “Chris contributed a lot to the brewery. However, we had different mindsets on where we wanted to take the business and how we wanted to do it. I look forward to seeing Chris’s achievements as he moves to something better suited for him personally.” Doug Sheets, Owner & COO.

Hops and Flip Flops, Speedway's first beer festival

There have been so many festivals popping up this year that trying to get to them all can be tough, even for a true beer geek. We've missed a few, but I'm excited that we made sure to go to this one.

Hops & Flip Flops, or Hopsfest as it appeared in a few places, was a hoppy beer festival in Speedway. For those of you who don't know, Daredevil took the lead on setting this one up and Daredevil is a brewery that knows how to make a hoppy beer.

The festival was on Main Street in Speedway right next to the spot where Daredevil will be opening up next year. The breweries were set up in the Dallara Indycar Factory and there were food trucks and bands all along the street.

 

It had a neighborhood block party meets beer festival sort of a vibe, which I really liked and thought went over well with the crowd. Brie and I got VIP tickets, and I will say the VIP glassware was probably the coolest festival taster I've ever gotten. It really had a high end appearance. VIP entrance also got you a couple food and beer pairings where we discussed what flavors match with what beers. It was all reasonably priced, so I'd say do VIP at this one if you can. The overall fest was well put together and would've been really informative to someone just getting into beer.

  

So, I'm not sure why it was called Hops and Flip Flops, no one even mentioned the flip flops. I understood the hops part. There were plenty of people not wearing flip flops. Footwear aside, it was a pretty good new festival. There were about twenty breweries there including some appearances from Flat 12, Triton, Against the Grain and of course Daredevil. There were some great IPA's but not a lot of people brought things outside of the norm.

My favorite beers were:
Triton O' Rye N  Galaxy - rye malt and galaxy hops, soooo tasty!
Bell's Hopsolution - just a well built IPA all around
Sierra Nevada Harvest Equinox Hop #366 - cool single hop IPA with a unique hop flavor

It was obvious this was the first year of the festival. They did a lot of things right, but for next time I think it would be great if they encouraged more local breweries to attend. There were about five Indiana breweries and the rest were national breweries that brought in their basic lineup. There were a lot of people bringing basic lineups to this festival, and that's not necessarily a problem, but a lot of what was there could be picked up at the store down the street. Lastly, I would love to see something done with flip flops. Maybe some flip flops handed out at the door. Maybe door prizes for people in flip flops. Just something to tie the flip flop idea into the festival other than hosting it in the summer. I think a second go around will give Daredevil a chance to iron out some of the bugs.

Even  though there were issues, a hop festival seems like such a great idea. Speedway and Daredevil were both so welcoming to the beer community. I personally can't wait until they open the doors of their Main Street facility.

Stay Classy Fountain Square!

Fountain Square Brewing Company has delivered a heck of a beer with Stay Classy Scotch Ale, a Ron Burgundy inspired scotch ale. Before I even started drinking the beer, all I could think of was "I love scotch, sotchy scotch scotch, here it goes down, down into my belly." Fountain Square really brought the scotch for this one. It was a great wee heavy scotch ale with a ton of barrel aged flavor. The combination just made you think of the good stuff from the aroma all the way into the flavor and a hot boozy finish.

It pours out like a "rich mahogany" with a dark brown with beautiful maroon highlights. There is a nice fluffy tan head that turns into really nice lacing along the glass. The aroma has a ton of whiskey barrel oak and vanilla tones followed up by big malty sweetness. Some dark fruits and bread crust smells mix nicely with the barrel smells. The flavor follows suit. There are a ton of toffee and caramel flavors from the malt. Some rich roasty character with the barrel flavors complimenting the whole brew. My only really complaint is that this beer is pretty sweet, but luckily Fountain Square kept a big punch of boozy heat on the back end. It cuts through the heat like a trident through a rival news anchor. There are a few herbaceous hop flavors, but the hops really take a back seat to the traditional UK flavors in this brew.

This is the first time that Fountain Square has released a bottled beer that wasn't part of their main lineup. It was a great beer, but the fact that they're bottling none standard beers is incredible! From what I can see on the four pack box, it looks like their non standard offerings are going to be part of something called the Finite series. This could mean 1221 in bottles or even Hop Your Face in bottles. Stay Classy was a great beer, but FSB makes so many awesome brews its exciting to see that they may start making local shelves soon.

I give this an a 4/5, I wish I had picked up more than a four pack.

If you weren't able to grab a four pack of this, you missed out, but keep an eye on the shelves. Fountain Square is going to be bringing out more great things.