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.