Brewfest 2005

by Matt Dunn

10th Annual Indy Microbrew Fest: Controlled Chaos and Good Beer

The Brewer's of Indiana Guild 10th Annual Indiana Microbrewers Festival is a pretty crappy name. I mean, let's be honest. Why can't it be the 'Indiana Brewer's Guild'? Or maybe 'Brewer's Guild of Indiana'? Whatever. I'm just happy that the awkwardness of the name has little to do with the awesomeness of the actual event.

Last Saturday's fest was really a great time. Parking was abundant, weather was super, keg tossers were plentiful, people were generally responsible, music was good and, of course, the beer was awesome. Just shy of 2000 people showed up to partake in Indiana's biggest beer event of the year and they were greeted by over 50 breweries from the Hoosier state and beyond.

Before I dive into my thoughts about the beers, I should preface this by saying that by no means did I do a thorough sampling of all the brews. I should also say that a fest is not the best place to be critiquing beer. So what follows are simply my general impressions and I feel at liberty to take back any and all comments should I deem it necessary. Ha.

Nice. So with that being said, I was absolutely awestruck, literally bowled over, I mean bludgeoned to a bloody pulp, errr, impressed, by Lafayette Brewing Company. I had run into these guys at Stoudt's Great Eastern Invitational Festival in Pennsylvania back in 2002, long before I ever thought I'd move to Indiana, and I remember thinking, wow, Indiana must have a great beer scene. Well, I have to say that this fest convinced me that we do have a pretty great beer scene in Indiana, we just need to get more people involved. Here's the guys from Lafayette.

The beer I remember so vividly from Pennsylvania was their Tippecanoe Common Ale. I seem to remember hearing that it's brewed with lots of Amarillo and Cascade hops and that sure does jive with my experience with the beer last Saturday. This brew is an American hop bomb. It's certainly not subtle, that's for sure. The massive American hops stand up proud and swagger around your mouth like a drunken pirate waving a rusty saber rather haphazardlyÖand you come away yelling 'MORE MORE MORE!'. This stuff just makes you crave more of the same. I don't know how they do it. As the fest was winding down I sauntered into and concerted with a small circle of people surrounding the Lafayette booth who were pounding one Common Ale after another, unable to pull ourselves away from it's brashy hoppy goodness.

But the Common Ale wasn't even the stand out beer of the fest for me. No. That honor goes to Lafayette's 1997 Franken-Boris Barleywine that was, yes, it was, aged in wine barrels. Now I have to admit that I only tried about two ounces of this sweet nectar, but that was enough to keep me thinking about it for going on 10 days now. Why don't more brewers experiment with wine barrels? What's with all the bourbon barrels? I mean, I know the brewing industry is a little anti-wine and all, but come on, it makes for some ridiculously complex beer. Well, I'm sure the 8 years of aging didn't hurt either. What I distinctly remember from my all too brief experience with this amazing beer is that the wine was really quite up front, just a tad too upfront to be honest. I bet the second or third filling of the barrel would be absolutely perfect.

They were also pouring a more recent version of their Barleywine that bore witness to their heavy handed tendencies with the American hop. It was good.

Ok, moving right along, who says Oaken Barrel can't make anything besides a Razz Wheat? I was pleasantly surprised with their attempt at the Saison style. I don't think it's out quite yet, but soon. It was definitely a little young at the fest, still quite sulfurous on the nose, but otherwise showing a pleasant fruitiness and a rather thorough attenuation. I think it's going to be released in corked and caged 750ml bottles. I'm going to try and get my hands on a couple of those.

My experience with Brugge Brasserie, Indy's newest brewery, was really a mixed bag. I only got to try their Tripel and Gran Cru, but I did visit their brewpub after the fest and sampled some food (and, gasp, a Spaten Lager). I wasn't terribly impressed with the Tripel, to be honest. I thought the fermentation character was quite harsh. I
really prefer a much smoother Tripel.

The Gran Cru, on the other hand, was a really top notch beer, I guess the name is quite apt. Much smoother fermentation character, some nice sweet malt and/or adjunct flavors, and a very interesting spice profile. Now I'll be honest, I don't really like beers that are heavily spiced, and Brugge's Gran Cru is definitely heavily spiced, but I realize this is just personal taste and shouldn't reflect on the quality of the brew itself. I can't remember what spices they use, but I think at least one of them is really weird. Definitely check this beer out if you're into spiced beers. I absolutely love their logo. Very cool.

Another Indiana brewery that I had a first time experience with at the fest was Mishawaka. I only tried their Replicale, the beer that all Indiana breweries brew (for competition?), this year it's a California Common style, aka 'Steam beer', and it was damn good. The brewer was claiming if it had more time in the tanks it would be better, but I have to say I find that hard to believe. It was really good that day.

Oh, and of course there was Founder's Breakfast Stout and 3Floyd's Dreadnaught, possibly the two most highly anticipated brews of the fest. The Breakfast stout is a massive roasty, malty beast of a double stout that weighs in at 8.3%abv. It's good, but I don't think it's worth all the hoopla. I guess I need to try it again because I'd hate to be behind the 'hip beer curve'.

And I think I'm finally coming around to 3Floyd's Dreadnaught. I haven't been this beer's friend now ever since I first tried it. And it's not because of the hops, believe you me. I love Rogue's Old Crustacean and their Imperial Stout, and they blow the doors off pretty much all other beers in the hop department. What I haven't liked about the Dreadnaught every other time I've tried it has been the syrupy, sticky sweetness of the beer. Just too goopy. But after a long afternoon of sampling beers at the fest, I found a couple ounces of Dreadnaught to be quite enjoyable. I'll have to give it yet another try in controlled surroundings I suppose. Hey, that guy doesn't work for 3Floyds!

Of course the beers themselves weren't the only thing happening at the fest. I also got to meet a bunch of people and witness them at their geekiest. Like Mark Schiess for example. Mark runs the Central Indiana Beer Appreciation Society and is one of the state's most winningest home brewers. He was collecting beer samples at the fest in an effort to devise a new system of color evaluation, something to compete with the Lovibond scale, SRM, the Standard Research Method or EBC, the European Brewing Convention. Here he is showing off his samples.

I also got to meet Ron Smith, the winner of this year's Beer Geek Challenge. The Beer Geek Challenge is a homebrew competition put on by World Class Beverages where the winner gets to brew their beer at one of the commercial breweries in Indiana and have it sold to the general public. This year the style was an Irish Red Ale. Here's a picture of Ron and Mark, both members of the Indy homebrew club, the Foam Blowers of Indiana (FBI)-they tap kegs, not phones.

Then there was the keg toss competition. Each toss cost $2 and all proceeds went to charity. Broad Ripple Brew Pub and one other entity (I'm sorry about my shotty reporting here) donated two kayaks as prizes. Let's just put it this way, they raised a TON of money for charity. Some dudes (and dudettes) were pretty sure if they just threw it one more time they would beat the mark. Here's a picture of yours truly pretty much sucking.

It ended up coming down to a fairly exciting finish between two young strapping lads who could really toss the keg. Here's a picture of the winner, Matt, during his winning toss.

After the fest I headed down to Broad Ripple Brewpub for a pint of hand pulled Best Bitter. It was great. I love a good traditional British brewery. From there we walked down to Brugge where we had the obligatory cone of fries. The fries were absolutely freakin' awesome-but the cone's a bit gimmicky. I also sampled some of their other food and was really impressed. Great little brewpub.

Until next time, keep your glasses filled with that sweet sweet nectar and remember, just because you're big and tough doesn't mean you can throw a keg very far.