Top Five Indiana Microbreweries
Derrek Tipton | staff reporter
dmtipton@bsu.edu
Sun King Brewing Co.
135 N. College Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46202
317-602-3702
Sun King Brewing Co. has an impressive résumé. They are winners of 13 Great American Beer Festival medals, five World Beer Cup medals and the 2012 Indiana Brewery of the Year at the Indiana Brewers Cup.
Owner Clay Robinson attributes the achievements to their beer quality, as well as their involvement in the community. They support more than 200 community-based and nonprofit organizations. Robinson said this allowed him to “help our partners raise over a half million dollars” last year.
Their brews include “Sunlight Cream Ale,” “Wee Mac Scottish Style Ale” and “Osiris Pale Ale.”
Upland Brewery
350 W. 11th St. Bloomington, IN 47404
812-336-2337
Upland Brewery was founded in Bloomington in 1997, but now also has locations in Carmel and Indianapolis.
The Bloomington facilities offer a restaurant, tours and a tasting room. The Indianapolis facility also has a tasting room and the Carmel location offers a tap house.
Their featured beers include IPA “Dragonfly,” “Wheat Ale,” pale ale “Helios” and imperial red ale ‘The Ard Ri,” among many other varieties.
Barley Island Brewing Co.
639 Conner St. Noblesville, IN 46060
317-770-5280
Noblesville’s Barley Island Brewing Co. has a saying: “Get Stranded with Better Beer!”
They take pride in their beer by “double-brewing” most of their output and using a state-of-the-art six-head bottle filler.
Barley Island Brewing Co. has won many awards, including a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival.
Some of their featured drinks include malted “80 Shilling Scotch Ale,” “Barfly IPA,” Belgian style black IPA “Barrel-aged Mussels from Brussels” and wood-aged beer “Beastie Barrel Porter.”
Salt Creek Brewery
466 Old State Road 37 Bedford, IN 47421
812-277-8277
Salt Creek Brewery is nestled in the countryside of Bedford and serves as the only brewery in Lawrence County.
Owner Brad Hawkins said Salt Creek Brewery stands out because the brewpub is located inside an old auto-service garage, where an open pit brewery is located in a converted alignment pit.
“Have you ever been to another brewery that is in a garage?” Hawkins said.
His favorite Salt Creek brew is the “Bourbon Vanilla Bean Stout.” Other brews include stout “Junkyard Dog,” blonde ale “Grace Kelly,” cream ale “Needmore Ale” and American wheat “Unplugged.”
Union Brewing Co.
622 N. Rangeline Road Carmel, IN 46032
317-564-4466
Carmel’s Union Brewing Co. uses “time honored traditions, natural ingredients and traditional methods,” to craft their beer.
Justine Fila, operations manager at Union Brewing Co., said her favorite brew is the “Apollo Space Flight,” which is an imperial IPA.
To make the “Apollo Space Flight,” Fila said they mash three different caramel malts and generous amounts of two-row barley. Next, they add local honey and put in three different hops: “Apollo,” “Falconer’s Flight” and “Galaxy.”
Tyler Varnau doesn’t buy beer, he brews it.
The senior journalism graphics major, is the president of the fledgling student organization Ball State Homebrew Club. The club achieved official approval last spring, but has not been active until this year, said Varnau.
He chills, ferments and bottles a new batch every two weeks in his kitchen and has brewed a total of 25 gallons of beer in his lifetime.
So far, the club consists solely of Varnau and vice president Josh Bertsch who share a passion for the art of home brewing.
Varnau dove headfirst into the hobby as soon as home-brewing was legally permitted in May 2013: the month he turned 21.
His club is a part of a national trend; the number of craft breweries in the nation has increased from eight in 1980 to 1,500 planned or established breweries as of June 2013, according to the Brewers Association.
BYOB: BREW YOUR OWN BEER
New to the craft, Varnau found the information he required from websites such as Reddit. Armed with his interest in art and science, he began brewing.
“I’ve always been into custom made things,” he said. “I just thought it’d be really cool to make my own recipes.”
Varnau’s first venture produced a batch of India Pale Ale with the help of a brew kit. He has since expanded his repertoire, changing his batches to fit the season and his personal preference.
“I’m really into Belgian beers right now, so I brewed a Belgian recently,” he said.
The production of a home-brewed beer is a series of these general steps: extreme sanitization of the brew area; boiling water, adding in extracts and hops; cooling the mix; adding wort—a mixture of yeast; fermentation; bottling and finally letting the product mature and carbonate.
It can take weeks to months from the start to when the brewer can actually enjoy their product.
Varnau’s hobby expands past just being an idle past time. He hopes to obtain a degree in brewing and one day own his own brewery. The Ball State Homebrew Club would be a healthy addition to a resume if Varnau attempts to further his goals, but he sees the organization as more than that.
“I just wanted to have people who I could actually talk to about brewing and annoy them with my beer snobbishness,” he said.
The idea of the club however has been brewing for a little over two years.
NEW CLUB ON THE BLOCK
Dr. George Gaither, faculty advisor of the Ball State Homebrew Club and an associate professor of psychological sciences has been involved since the club was just a small thought of former student, Chase Lennon.
Lennon and Gaither joined together to create a constitution for the club to present to the office of student life.
To pacify concerns of having a club closely associated with the creation and consumption of alcohol on a campus, Lennon and Gaither’s constitution included strict stipulations for its members: students under the legal drinking age are not allowed membership, and any student in the club convicted of a drinking related charge is debarred.
Although Lennon graduated before he could see the club claim its first member, his efforts made the club official.
Upon inheriting the club, Varnau contacted Bertsch, a senior biology major to help bring it to life.
“Since I love brewing so much, it was easy to see the need for a club like this at Ball State,” Bertsch said. “There had to be others out there with the same interest as we do.”
Gaither, who has brewed his own alcoholic concoctions since 2007, also shared his excitement of being involved with the club.
“I have faculty advised other clubs before, but this is the first one that is really strongly related to a personal interest of my own, “ he said.
As an unseasoned organization, Varnau only has a rudimentary blueprint for the club. He plans to host two meetings a month and hopes to fit in discussions about home-brewing.
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