528. Cruz Blanca Brewery (Chicago, IL) - Freetown

“Inspired by the neighborhood of Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark. Powerful, hazy, dank and fruity tropical expression of Sabro, Vic Secret, and Ekuanot Cryo hops.”

This is very much in the same vein as Palm Shade, but with a much bigger punch. The alcohol (8.5% ABV) is very strong up front, and it lingers, long and dry, on the back end—until it warms up, at which point it starts to taste like very ripe papaya and mango that have been macerating in grain alcohol for most of the day. I am entirely amenable to the idea that I like this one almost entirely because finding this place was one of those beautiful happy accidents that can somehow never quite be planned; but it’s also pretty solid without the background.

527. Cruz Blanca Brewery (Chicago, IL) - Palm Shade

“Tropical fruit hop aroma of a modern IPA with deeply quenching drinkability of a pale ale. Subtle bitterness, vibrant notes of mandarin orange, mango, and pineapple.”

At first, I was going to argue with the phrase subtle bitterness,” because it just seems like a long way to say dry; but after a couple of sips, I’m coming around. Tried this the first time on tap at the brewery, and then knocked out a couple of cans in the hotel room. This is the first one I have had since we got home. It definitely has a lot of tropical fruit going on, as well as some orange and stone fruit; and all of that fruit masks whatever dryness or bitterness there might be in the finish. I located this place by accident while randomly searching for “breweries near me” while we were killing time on Monday before our 4:00 tickets to the Shedd Aquarium, and it was a little bit of a walk from our hotel downtown—but totally worth it. We each got a lamb cheeseburger taco, and they were very, very good. They actually tasted like lamb, which is too often not the case when you order lamb in Indianapolis. Amy was also quite taken with the guacamole. This beer was just okay, and so was the other one I tried at the brewery; but the third one, which I got in cans to take home, was a knockout. You shall hear.

525. Bloomington Brewing Co. (Bloomington, IN) - Clown Convention

“Tropical Fruit Flavors of guava, passion fruit and strawberry. A smooth, hazy IPA.”

Oddly tart for fruits that should not be; and though it’s hazy, it ain’t remotely smooth—but it ain’t bad, either. It’s like dank, mixed fruit up front, and then bitter on the back end. I’ve tried a handful of beers from these cats, both on tap down in B-town and in cans up here—and I still don’t know what to make of them. My initial note says that it needs to warm up, and the one I’m working on now is sitting in a room temperature mug from which I have consumed a number of other beers today. This last can isn’t tart at all. It has sweet echoes of fruit up front, and just a hint of dry on the back end. It’s definitely better warm, and is so far the best thing I have tried from Bloomington Brewing Co.

526. Steel Hands Brewing (Cayce, SC) - Coffee Lager

“Rise & shine! A rich aroma of your morning coffee gently fades to an easy drinking lager. Golden, light and crisp, this beer is a classic style with the familiarity of a good ‘ole cup of Joe. A smooth and balanced taste that is sure to please beer drinkers and coffee aficionados alike. Infused with coffee from local roaster, Loveland Coffee.”

This beer has a monster coffee flavor up front, and it lingers all the way down. You get a little more of the lager character on subsequent sips, but the coffee backbone remains both prevalent and pleasant; and the bitter nature of the coffee complements the sweet-ish nature of the lager. Low-ish ABV beers (this one clocks in at 4.5%) usually aren’t my thing, but this one is very impressive.

524. Windmill Brewing (Dyer, IN) - Distant Early Warning

“English Dark Mild brewed with EKG and Fuggle hops. Brewed in collaboration with our friends at Fuzzyline Brewing in Highland, IN.”

I’m not familiar with this style, but those might be two of the best-named hops of all time. This one tastes like buttery shortbread cookies with hints of caramel, butterscotch, and chocolate. Doesn’t make my socks roll up and down, but the name of the beer is the same as the name of a Rush song from Grace Under Pressure. I can’t believe that’s a coincidence, but I can’t find anything on the interwebs to back it up, either.

523. Sun King (Indianapolis, IN) - Kangaroo Jumping Jacks

“Kangaroo Jumping Jacks is a Hazy IPA brewed with southern hemisphere hops for stone fruit and pine character.”

Soft pine aroma and juicy peach and apricot flavor up front, and it becomes a little more complex as it warms up. The peach and apricot linger very nicely on the back end, but I can’t decide if the pine flavor is trying to make itself known or not. (I also can’t decide if it’s interesting or not.)

522. Scarlet Lane Brewing Company (McCordsville, IN) - Bella in the Wych Elm

“Pale Ale with Mautere Hops (Notes of Grapefruit, Passionfruit, and Pine).”

It’s possible that the breadsticks I’m eating with this are frying my taste buds in some cosmic, gustatory way; but what flavors there might be seem somewhat muddled (and I still don’t think I would recognize passionfruit if it fell out of the sky, landed on my face, and started to wiggle [h/t to the late, great John Hughes]). For a Scarlet Lane joint, however, it’s approachable and pleasant—smooth up front, with just a hint of the bitter fnish that too often dominates their pales. (And it should perhaps be noted that this beer is listed as “Pale Ale” on the menu, not “IPA.”)

Indianapolis Beer News #1

I don’t know if this is going to be a regular thing or not, so I’m numbering them just in case. I am not a journalist, so what I post here might not pass muster for the Rory Gilmores of the world; but neither will it be hearsay. It will come from someone directly employed in the industry, and if I suspect that the narrator is unreliable, I will say so. And with that, having caveated myself (and yes, I am aware that I used the word caveat as a verb there), off we go.

I had to take Jackson to choir practice yesterday because my wife has Covid again, and while he was choiring (there's another new verb), I stopped in at the Scarlet Lane on Bellefontaine to write for a little bit. They had Black Acre’s Natural Liberty on the menu, so I asked if that was a keg from Black Acre, or if Eilise had brewed it. Turns out it was from Black Acre, and they have a couple more kegs to go; but then it switches to the Scarlet Lane version of Natural Liberty. They won’t have Saucy Intruder until they open in Irvington—which I am told will be in March.

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.

Deep Thoughts #304

Read the January 6th report—especially if you still think Republicans are valid. Michael Flynn is an un-American and cowardly piece of shit.

9. Indiana City Brewing Co. - Tribute Pale Ale

“Tribute Pale Ale is hopped exclusively with the mighty Eureka hop which imparts dank aroma, smooth hop flavor and balanced bitterness.”

I’m not sure dank is a word you want to use when you’re describing your beer. I’m also not sure that the bitterness is balanced. But I’m also not sure either of those is a bad thing. I’m not sure they’re good things, either. I lack general overall certainty about this beer, but it’s interesting enough that I am totally willing to come back to it at some point.

Originally posted on August 9, 2017

TAKE TWO (February 12, 2023): Just picked this up at random at Stoney's last night, and was told as I was checking out that Indiana City is folding. I had heard that they were trying to find a buyer and that their stuff would be up for auction soon if they did not, so I guess this might be it. If true, it's a damn shame, and not just because they make great beer. They also distribute way more of their stuff than most breweries in Indianapolis. My second take on this is that it's interesting, but a little muddled. There's a fruit flavor that isn't quite mixed up enough to be called fruit cocktail, but isn't anything specific, either; and the finish is somewhere between dry and bitter. The second one, poured into the same mug from whence came the first, gives me a hint of papaya and maybe a bit of grapefruit; and it remains interesting. I don't love it the way I've loved some of their other stuff, but I like it enough to want to keep drinking it (and to want to stock up on it if they really are going to fold).

520. Bell’s Brewery (Comstock, MI) - Big Hearted

“Imperial style IPA. Citrus and berry hop aromas, balanced with a slight bitterness.”

Power of suggestion, maybe, but I do get a flavor of berries up front. The high alcohol (9.5%) gives it a full-bodied, shimmering finish that isn’t quite the bitter bite you might expect from something this big and bold. It’s certainly not a bad beer, but I sort of feel like I should be more impressed by it. That “slight bitterness”—which is really just a polysyllabic euphemism for “dry”—becomes somewhat more pronouced as the beer warms, though this is not off-putting. I tried a second one against my better judgment, knowing that 9.5% might turn me into a drooling lunatic…but I couldn’t shake the feeling from the first one that this was something akin to a grown-up version of Six Foot Strawberry Blonde, which…and you know what?…looking back at it, I find that I have never posted about Six Foot Strawberry Blonde. But it’s much drier on the back end, even after it warms up. Again, not bad…just maybe a bit too ambitious.

519. Black Acre Brewing Company (Indianapolis, IN) - Arthouse Blonde

“An Indiana farmhouse blonde ale made in collaboration with Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie.”

This will probably be the last Black Acre beer that I ever post; their last day of business is this coming Saturday, which will also be the 11th anniversary of the day they opened. I’m not usually big on farmhouse beers, mostly because funky Belgian yeast just doesn’t seem to do it for me; but this one is bright and refreshing and thoroughly pleasant. The one I had in the taproom a couple of days ago had some pronounced citrus flavor up front, but this one (though they are from the same batch) is more hints of funky yeast and sweet grass, with maybe a little bit of unripe melon on the back end. The citrus begins to come up a bit as the beer warms, and I am liking this more and more with every sip.

4. Black Acre Brewing Company - Natural Liberty

“Aggressively Citra hopped with plenty of bold citrus hop notes and a light pilsner malt body.”

It’s so warm up here in my aboveground lair that by the time I got to the end of this one, despite the fact that I had poured it into a frosted mug, it had warmed up to the point that the grapefruit notes from the Citra hops were quite prominent. So then I tried a cold one in the same now-warm mug to see if the grapefruit notes were there, and they were not. I detected more in the way of floral notes, and the beer, while possibly less complex, was more refreshing. Regardless of the temperature, it’s a little bit sharp for my tastes—but just a little. It’s possible that I am partial to Black Acre because they here in my 'hood, yo—but they are making some pretty good beer (and more of it now that they’ve moved the brewery into larger digs).

Originally posted on July 2, 2017

TAKE TWO (January 29, 2023): Black Acre will close its doors on February 4, 2023 - 11 years to the day after it opened. When Black Circle started closing after the holidays last year (by which I mean 2021), I started going to Black Acre to do my drink-two-beers-and-write-for-an-hour thing after work; and it proved to be such a better place for that than Loom or Black Circle ever were. This was the first Black Acre beer I posted, way back in 2017 when I started this odyssey. I no longer stand by what I said about this beer the first time. The one I am drinking now, out of a can - and probably the last of its kind that I will ever drink - is unremarkable. They call it an "American Pale Lager," but if they started brewing it today, they would call it a "Cold IPA." It's too dry and upright to be a genuine lager, but not quite enough of either to be a genuine ale. And you know what? That's kind of what was always magic about Black Acre. They brewed all kinds of nonsense that did not always fit easily into standard beer categories; and before the world shit the bed, they brewed some fantastic one-off IPAs. (I almost said that this beer is very approachable, but that's what Sun King says about their cream ale; and I don't want to be aping those cats.) It's light and dry and good...and it's Black Acre. You got six more days, people. Most of the good stuff is gone, but they're still tapping kegs; and you can still get a booth and sit there for an hour while you drink two (or three) beers and do some writing.

518. Pax Verum Brewing Company (Lapel, IN) - Dark Matter

“Awaken your senses from a spellbinding conjuring of things that reach beyond. A stout conditioned on toasted coconut and sweetened with milk sugar.”

Don’t know that I would have guessed coconut, initially, if it hadn’t been in the description. The first sip, when it’s cold, is mostly lactose and chocolate, with a whiff of something on the back end that feels like a combination of chocolate malt and alcohol. Then it starts to warm up, and all kinds of interesting things happen. The whiff of alcohol is gone, and the taste of coconut seems to…I don’t even know…rise from somewhere past the back end, long after the sip has gone down the gullet. It pairs nicely with the chocolate malt and gives way to a surprisingly dry, lingering finish. I say surprising not because it’s so dry, but because there is any hint of dryness at all; the lactose is, unfortunately, overpowering. This is a good beer that I think could have been great if they had dialed down the lactose. Upping the alcohol from a modest 6.7% ABV might have done the trick, too.

517. People’s Brewing Company (Lafayette, IN) - People’s IPA

“American-style India Pale Ale. Our flagship IPA is well-balanced with American base malt and three caramalts for a reddish hue. Formerly named Moundbuilder IPA, we are excited to rebrand People’s IPA with respect and gratitude for the Indigenous American peoples who live in Indiana today. An aggressive use of Columbus, a high alpha hop with a full flavor profile, Centennial hops, and dry hopped with Columbus, lending citrus flavors with notes of pine and grapefruit. People’s IPA is a hoppy, yet smooth American twist on the English IPA.”

I’m not going to get into the whole renaming thing, for all kinds of reasons—except to say this: If you’re going to rename Moundbuilder out of respect and gratitude, then maybe you should think about changing the recipe altoghether. Three caramalts for a reddish hue, and two uses of Columbus hops (one of which is aggressive). Could you be more fucking tone deaf? These cats make some pretty good beer (the grapefruit version of this pedestrian IPA is actually kind of amazing), but they have apparently hired a Speak & Spell with low batteries to do their marketing.

516. Scarlet Lane Brewing Company (McCordsville, IN) - Myopic

“El dorado [sic], Simcoe, & Strata Hops.”

Pretty sure I’ve had this before, but apparently have not commented on it. Very nicely IPA-ish, smooth up front, with some indeterminate fruit and an equally smooth finish. None of the fruit ever really announces itself, though there is a hint of Creamsicle and some citrus shine on the back end as it warms up. Very drinkable.

515. Scarlet Lane Brewing Company (McCordsville, IN) - Gryla

“Featuring Spruce Tips, Cara Cara Orange and Nutmeg.”

Not much in the way of spruce or orange initially, but there is a nice, soft echo of nutmeg that lingers on the back end. I was hoping for more spruce flavor, thinking that this might be akin to the Spruce & Juice that Dan used to brew at Black Circle. Alas, no.

514. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Hans Grubeer

“Everyone’s favorite Christmas movie villain now has a Christmas beer. A heavily hopped COLD IPA, basically a hoppy lager, that focuses on letting the hop flavors shine. Yummy Ki-yay. Yeah, we said it, not ashamed.”

Amy suggested Half Liter BBQ for lunch today, and if not for that suggestion, I might never have known of the existence of this beer. The name alone was enough to make me try it, and the one I had at the restaurant was okay—mild melon and papaya flavor up front and a pleasantly bitter finish (more like a straight-up IPA than a Cold IPA). Good, but not interesting.

Then I got a four-pack so I could try them at home, and just looking at the label on the can made me glad I had made the purchase. The Christmas tree on the can has the beer’s name in what looks like the font from the one-sheet for A Christmas Story, and it also has ornaments of Hans Gruber himself, as well as Nakatomi Plaza (pre-C4 and “Take this under advisement, jerkweed!”), John McClane’s lighter, and Karl’s chainsaw.

But wait! If you act now, you can double your pleasure and double your fun by turning the can over to look at what they stamped on the label just above the production date—it’s “Yippy Ki-Yay MF.”

And how do the one in the cans taste? A little bit different, actually. More like mixed fruit and vanilla up front, with a smooth finish that leaves a vague, lingering dryness on the back of the throat. Much more interesting than the one I had at the restaurant. I haven’t tried enough Cold IPAs yet to have an opinion, but if this is the kind of thing that can be done with them, then I’m on board.

513. Sun King (Indianapolis, IN) - The Flying Cupcake

“The Flying Cupcake is a Collaboration Blonde Oatmeal Stout made with yellow cupcakes filled with mixed berry compote and iced with white chocolate icing.”

(And apparently it’s just understood that the collaboration is with a local outfit called The Flying Cupcake.) But I digress; and yes, those are probably cupcakes in there. And white chocolate. And icing. We can only hope that it’s buttercream icing and not that whipped cream shit that some people like. And it’s fine. Is it anything to write home about? No. Is it bad? No. Is it sort of extra creamy because of the oatmeal? We could go on and on about that. I have had both lovely and anonymous experiences with beers that use oat (or oatmeal) as the grain base; prolly the best I can say is that it don’t confront me none. The grain base doesn’t make my socks roll up and down; it’s mostly the hops that do that. (And you probably know that by now.)