521. Indiana City Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Sister City

“Cologne, Germany is the birthplace of Kölsch bier, and it’s also one of Indy’s eight Sister Cities. We craft Sister City in adherence to brewing guidelines drafted by Cologne brewers to preserve consistency and quality for this delicious style. It’s a delicately balanced, lightly hopped, straw colored ale that drinks like a crisp clean lager.”

And much like Arthouse Blonde was my swan song for Black Acre, this is going to be my swan song for Indiana City, which closed on February 18th. (The fact that the world shit the bed three years ago is not the direct cause of either closure; but neither is it blameless.) I’ve never been big on this style, but I had one at Kismetic Beer Company recently that may have changed my mind; and now I feel like I might be opening up to Kölsch, though perhaps not to the extent that I opened up to pumpkin ales this past fall. When I saw this in the cooler at Stoney’s (and not price-gouged, the way they upped the price on the last…um…several dozen cases of Black Acre beer they got), I bit. (And to be perfectly honest, I probably would have bitten on a price-gouged four-pack of something from the Craft Brew Doodle Crew series, too. Those were some of my favorite Indianapolis beers of all time.) This is not as interesting as the one I had at Kismetic, and I still don’t have much experience with Kölsch; but I don’t think this one drinks like a lager. It’s more like a Brut IPA—smooth and somewhat effervescent, with very faint hints of citrus and stone fruit on the back end. It doesn’t appeal to me all that much, but I think it’s well done.