Kokomo Temporarily Loses a Gem

It is with a heavy heart that we bring news from the folks at Brass Monkey Brewing Co. in Kokomo. The following statement was recently found on their website:

Due to the recent closing of The Marketplace, Brass Monkey is forced to take a hiatus. Plans are currently in the works for a reemergence in '09. Till then, stay tuned and stay thirsty!

For those of you not familiar with Brass Monkey, they are probably best known for their interesting and stylistically varied small batch brews, many of which have been showcased at Indiana brewfests. Many of the knights have visited Brass Monkey before, and there's always been a crowd, so this news came as quite a shock.

The good news is that Brass Monkey will be back.

In order to get a better understanding of what happened, I sent Brass Monkey brewer extraordinaire Andrew Lewis an email, and he was pretty quick with answers.


The former home of Brass Monkey Brewing Co.
Is this the case (sort of like they recently had at Goose Island Clybourn) where you're just leasing the space and have no control over what they do with the building? How was business before this happened?

Andrew: The Marketplace was a restaurant that had been in business for 4 years. This past May, we moved in and began renting space and selling our beers exclusively through them. This was a win/win because it allowed me to open on a shoestring budget and it gave them the opportunity to advertise that they had an on-site brewery.

Business was always good for us and I would frequently brew up to 10 times a week or more just keep our regular lineup on tap. This wasn't helped by the fact that I was literally brewing on my homebrew setup and was only turning out 10 gallons a brew. Mid-November I actually upgraded to a 40 gallon system, but only got to use it twice before receiving the news that The Marketplace was closing (sadly, they are currently closed). It does sound similar to the Goose Island incident in that sense.

Are you looking at staying in Kokomo? (And if not, there are plenty of open spaces on the south side of Indy...)

Andrew: We've got a lot of options we're looking at right now and most of them would involve staying around Kokomo. My wife's pregnant with our first baby due in Jan. so I'll probably lay low until then. In the meantime, we may have some of our surplus kegs on tap at The Half Moon in Kokomo.

I definitely appreciate all the support we've received from you guys up until this point and will certainly keep you up-to-date on future plans.