The Heorot
(and a couple of other Muncie bars)

(introduction by Matt Dunn)...

Why the hell is there a bar like the Heorot in Muncie Indiana? I really have no idea and to be honest, I really don't care. I'm just glad it's there. And while not everything at the Heorot is as I'd like it to be, Stan Stephens has created a truly unique bar experience that easily makes my top 10 US bar list and should really be a destination for any beer geek looking to get perspective on what beer is and what it was in, say, the days before refrigeration. I'll explain in a minute.

Stan, the owner of the Heorot, had been along on the World Class Beverages trip to Michigan and we got to talking, namely about his beer cellar. So last Tuesday I drove up to Muncie to finally check it out. Unfortunately, Stan just had shoulder surgery and was still pretty laid up so he couldn't make it down to show me around. But Kim, the man who gets shit done, took the time to give me a tour.

Now before we get to the cellar, which you'll probably agree is a true geek's playground, I'd like to offer my understanding of what the Heorot is. And maybe I'm completely wrong about it. But tough shit.

So let's get the bad things out of the way first. So the cellar, as we're about to find out, is extensive and impressive. However, virtually none of the really good bottles from the cellar have made it onto the bottle list. I have no idea how you would know about the incredible bottle selection. And the cellar is so ridiculously disorganized that even if there was a list, it would undoubtedly miss some of the bottles. And along the same lines, if someone ordered one of the more obscure bottles, it's likely that it could only be found after a several hour long complete dissection of the piles of boxes and bottles that litter the Heorot's basement. Now maybe there's a method to Stan's madness. Maybe he knows exactly where everything is.

But I doubt it.

A more reasonable explanation is that he only makes the rare stuff available on a limited basis, maybe one or two beers at a time. I guess that would make sense. So don't go in demanding a 1988 Lees because you might just not be allowed to have it- yet.

Now, onto the 'bad-depending-on-your-perspective' things. The Heorot is not a very aesthetically clean or bright bar. There are no windows on the first floor, the bar area, except the three along the front of the building. So this makes for a rather dark barroom. I like this. But, the Heorot is 'dark' in lots of other ways too. Like, I don't know, the several ratty, dusty looking sheep and buffalo heads, the several swords and battle axes and shields, the rather dirty looking walls and peeling paint. But hey, this all adds to the rather 'historical' feel of the place. The building itself is really fantastic. Right on the main street in downtown Muncie. It's probably at least 100 years old and very aesthetically appealing from the outside.

I should also mention that the two, count 'em two, other floors are really much much cleaner aesthetically and really just better in my opinion, except that the bar is not there of course. The second floor has a very cool Viking lodge type room with huge wooden beams and all. The back room is also really nice with very tall ceilings, huge windows and a very pleasant fireplace.

Then there was the cask of Uerige Sticke Altbier. This is a really tasty Alt style beer made in Dusseldorf Germany. 'Sticke' means 'secret' in Rhineland slang and typically corresponds to a stronger and more flavorful interpretation of Altbier that is only released a couple times a year. This one is 6%abv and shows a really nice hop bitterness and flavor and a sturdy Munich malt backbone. The traditional way to serve Altbier in Dusseldorf is via a wooden cask and gravity pours. The Heorot has taken up the call. How cool is that? But unfortunately, the Heorot doesn't quite have the same rate of consumption that a pub in the Altstadt in Dusseldorf has and this has created problems for their cask of Uerige (pronounced in three syllables sort of like ur-ee-ga).

When you pour a beer from a vessel, you need to replace the volume lost to the beer with some sort of gas or you'll create a vacuum. With a keg, high pressures of CO2 are maintained. In a cask, however, the whole idea is to keep the pressure as low as possible to keep carbonation to a minimum, so typically you simply have more or less a hole in the top of the keg that just lets air into the cask to make up for the volume lost to the poured beer. Well, if this is what you do, the beer will only 'keep' for 2-7 days typically depending on a bunch of things like hopping rate, abv, temperature etc. And this is fine and good at a place that moves a lot of the product. But after a couple days microorganisms from the air that have entered the keg begin to grow in the beer and turn it cidery and sour.

Anyway, to make an already long story just a little longer, this is what has happened to the cask of Uerige at the Heorot. It's pretty sour and cidery. Now I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing for somebody out trying to understand what beer is all about, but really, this is a rather utopian view I realize. I mean, not much more than 150 years ago this was probably fairly common what without refrigeration and a sophisticated microbiology. Therefore, it was actually kind of interesting to taste a soured Sticke Alt. It really was pretty tasty, just not worth the $5 a pint they wanted for it.

And actually, sourness and cideryness are acceptable in some styles of beer other than the really sour ones like Lambic, Oud Bruins etc. Namely, Barley Wines and Old Ales. These beers are typically so strong, sweet and well hopped that they sour only gradually and typically benefit from the additional attenuation that the other microorganisms provide. Such is the case with the other (yes, they have two!) gravity cask on the bar at the Heorot right now: JW Lee's port barrel aged Harvest Ale. How cool is that to have two casks on the bar? If you don't have the chance to try a casked JW Lees that has developed some sourness, you can pick up a bottle of Vintage Gales Old Ale at some of the better beer stores in the state. It can be pretty sour and cidery.

OK, so now on to the good stuff. The Heorot's draft selection is extensive with more than 50 taps and one hand pull. Some of the standouts when I was there were Unibroue's Maudite and Blanche de Chambly, Bell's Sparkling Ale, Dogfish Head 60 and 90 Minute, Rogue's Old Crustacean, Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot, Ayinger Celebrator and Reissdorf Kolsch. Not to mention all the rather standard offerings that wouldn't be standard at a bar of lesser quality such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Rogue Dead Guy, Bell's Two Hearted, 3Floyd's Alpha King etc. Here is a picture of the two excellent bar tenders and about half of the taps.

As soon as I sat down I went straight to the Rhineland. Cologne (or Koln) is a city just west of Dusseldorf where Kolsch was 'invented'. The Reissdorf on draft is really tasty. Both Alt and Kolsch are traditionally served in small, straight sided glasses such as these.

Nice work Heorot...

But the draft selection isn't even the most impressive thing about the Heorot. And, as you may have gathered already, it's not their regular bottle selection either, even though they have about 250 different bottles of absolutely world class beer.

Rather, it's their cellar.

So here are some pics and brief descriptions of some of the beers in the cellar. And I only got to see about 1/3 of it! Imagine if I had the chance to dig through the whole thing? Holy crap the riches I would discover.

Here is a pretty rare bottle of the 23%abv 2002 Dogfish Head World Wide Stout with the words 'Vim and Vigor' blacked out my magic marker. Dogfish Head had to go through and do that to each bottle by hand because the government said so. Here is a great description of the 2003 bottling by beer writer Lew Bryson: ìThis beer is like a Rochefort 10 someone kept in a cage and force-fed with red meat and lots of fruit, poking at it with a sharp stick every so often so it would grow up mean.

Here is a stack of Cantillon cases. I saw at least three different kinds of Cantillon in the cellar. Cantillon is one of the more traditional Lambic brewers in Belgium.

Chouffe brewery makes some great beers, and their winter brew, N'ice Chouffe, is one of the best. And these bottles are from 1996. Wow. I'm sure that 10%abv strong dark ale has matured gracefully.

The top of three big stacks of bottles: De Ranke, a great small brewery in Belgium that makes an awesome pale ale, the aforementioned Cantillon, and some Triple Karmeliet, a really tasty trippel from Belgium.

This is one of the true gems of Stan's cellar: 1995 Boon Geuze Mariage Parfait. Boon is another lambic brewer and blender in Belgium and this is their 'grand cru'. Geuze is a blend of different lambics and 'marriage parfait' means 'perfect blend'. It's a pretty special beer when it's new, let alone after it's been cellared for 10 years.

And while we're on the true gems of the cellar, how about some 1988 JW Lees Harvest Ale? I don't know why there are two different labels for the same year, maybe you do? Lees Harvest Ale is an 11.5%abv Barleywine style beer made from the best malt and whole leaf East Kent Golding hops. Only released once a year and crafted to age better than a fine wine, a 17 year old bottle of Harvest Ale is something to drive hours (if not days?) for.

But an even more interesting and tasty way to enjoy Lees Harvest Ale is from an oak cask. This is certainly the traditional way and a completely different experience from the bottle. Stan has several different vintage casks of Lees hanging around. Some of the casks are old Lagavulin scotch casks, some are old port casks, calvados casks or sherry casks. Each one, as you can imagine, is quite different.

Stacks of Stone, Dogfish Head, Samuel Smith and way too much Sam Adam's Triple Bock. I mean, Triple Bock is a unique beer to say the least, and Stan has a very impressive collection, going back at least to 1995, but he also might have way too much Triple Bock for anybody's good. Have you ever tried that beer? Whew.

Ok, I'm going to let you down easy now. Here's some vintage Moinette from Dupont, a very tasty strong pale brew.

Here's a nice vintage England sandwich.

And look at that, there's a nice stash of the real champagne of beers, Deus. This is a pretty rare beer and very expensive beer. It's a very dry Belgian-esque brew that is highly effervescent and finished with the traditional method champenoise

And here's Kim, the man who gets shit done, with a cask of JW Lees. When I think of the Heorot, I think of this picture. I don't know, is that strange?

-Matt Dunn

 

Representative Beer Menu

50 taps include standards such as SN Pale Ale, Fuller's London Pride, Alpha King, and Warsteiner but go to seasonals and specialties such as (Feb, 2004) Hoegaardon, 7 Bell's titles, Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, Rogue Old Crusty, and SN Bigfoot.

$2.00 to $4.00 per pint.
$7.00 to $15.00 per pitcher.

Growlers available of any draught beer for the pitcher price plus $3 for the jug if not a refill. You may also find a cask of Real Ale or similar beer on the counter.

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There are also about 300 bottled beers. We found Hopback's Entire Stout, and even Stan's favorite: 1995 Sam Adam's Triple Bock. Low sellers that are appropriate kept warm are stacked on shelves to be chilled as needed. Bottles that should be served cold are kept on ice. Others include:

Adnams 18 Bells varieties Black Sheep Broughton

Camerons Chimay Delirium 10 Dog Fish Head varieties

Lindemans North Coast Scheider Unibroue

Mug Club: After you have 200 different beers you can be placed on a waiting list for one of 27 mugs. This is an honor, not a promotion.

Representative Food Menu Snacks $2 - $4 Pizza (12") $4 Sandwiches $4 Weekday lunch specials such as smoked sausage sandwiches for $2.

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There is 1 other beer bar near the Ball State campus but it pales in comparison to the Heorot.

Scotty's Brewhouse 1700 W. University Ave. 765-747-5151Mon - Fri: 11am Sat - Sun: NoonWeb site Also in Bloomington and Lafayette. 34 taps and more bottles. New sports bar with lots of TVs. A sports bar with 34 taps. Typically $3.75 for 16 oz., $5.25 for 23 oz., and $13 for 60oz pitchers.Round The World challenge. $1 for passport. Drink all their beers (including bottles, Budmillercoors, malternatives, and NAs) to get a T-shirt and a free beer. Participate and any of the 3 Scotty's. VIP Club ($5) earns points for $ spent to get glasses, t-shirts, etc. Food is TGIF-ish. Appetizers, salads, sandwiches, burgers, wraps, and ice cream concoctions.