531. Moontown Brewing Company (Whitestown, IN) - Brown County

“Our continued journey through the Pints for Parks series has us traveling south to Nashville arriving at our 7th park, Brown County. We created a delightful beer for the time of year, and extremely fitting for our parks series. An India Brown Ale, described by Dogfish Head as the prototypical dark IPA and an original hybrid. Our IBA truly is the thoughtful melding of wonderful aspects from different beer types to create a one of a kind sensory drinking experience. Close your eyes and take a good inhale from your fresh pour, it smells like a juicy IPA. Take a sip and experience a citrusy tropical ride into a luxurious brown ale. This big brown ale is brewed with a big base of our local Sugar Creek Malt Company’s Ye Olde, chocolate rye along with a couple other specialty malts, and a unique addition of Belgian Candi brown sugar lending dark druit and molasses characteristics. We balanced it with classic west coast hops Nugget and Chinook, then dry hopped heftily with Simcoe, Amarillo, and Cascade. It’s complex from the first smell and sip, allow this to warm and open up into an even more intricate brown ale. Journey on, thank you for supporting the parks!”

I’ve been wanting to try this place forever. I see the signs every time we go up 65 (which we did a lot while the world was shitting the bed), but this past weekend, when we drove up to Chicago for our anniversary, (20 years!), I decided to make it a point to stop there. The main impetus is that they have been doing a series called “Pints for Parks,” featuring beers inspired by or dedicated to state parks here in Indiana. The one on tap when we stopped there was Brown County, which calls itself an “India Brown Ale.” I’m not sure if this is a style or a mash-up, but whatever it is, it’s pretty fucking good. Dark and creamy, with a vaguely fruit-ish hop punch there at the end. Dried fruit as it warms up, and a nice bitter finish. End of the day, I think it’s a brown ale with something of an IPA punch. It’s also lovely and amazing (much like Emily Mortimer).