Hoosier Beer Geek at Big Car

Things are moving fast and details are still a bit sketchy, but we can safely announce that Hoosier Beer Geek and World Class Beverages will be making an appearance at the August 3rd edition of First Friday for Outsiders Unite! at Big Car in Fountain Square.

What brought this on? Our interview with Jim Walker of INtake/Big Car:

I'm working on making a really big and fun event out of our First Friday art opening on aug. 3 at Big Car in Fountain Square and thought it would be cool to make it a beer opening where people can learn about better beers and your group. I've just been so into beer since working on the story and hanging out with you guys that I want to spread the word to others.

Jim's beer-related excitement is exactly the sort of attitude we're trying to foster at Hoosier Beer Geek - and we couldn't be more thrilled about the event at Big Car.

More details about the event will be forthcoming next week. We hope to see you there.

We're Experts*

Our thanks go out to Jim Walker and the folks at INtake, who have given Hoosier Beer Geek another healthy dose of publicity thanks to the many articles in their June 21st beer issue.

Advice from our Knights of the Beer Roundtable were featured in three seperate articles in the issue: Beer Me, Learning to Sip, and Booze Clues.

There's a little something to learn for everyone in the INtake issue; for example, at least three Hoosier Beer Geeks were not aware of Party Pak Liquors, which is just a couple miles from my beautiful and expansive southside estate. From the looks of their beer selection in the article, an awareness of Party Pak is going to be pretty rewarding.

Pick up the new issue of INtake at your local grocery store, liquor store, bar, church, temple or synagogue, or adult bookstore.

*We are not experts.

Hop Shop Publicity Stop

Last evening, the beer geeks met up at The Hop Shop for a beer conversation with owner Courtney and Jim Walker from INtake. Knowing that this had the possibilities of being my new five minutes of fame (replacing the time I made it onto the field at a St. Louis Steamers indoor soccer game at the age of 10), I made sure to wear a nice shirt.

Jim asked us to behave as we normally do at a meetup, and this proved to be a little difficult; We don't have a very specific formula. We all decided to chose a warm-up beer and go from there.

If you haven't been to the Hop Shop, then you're in for a treat - shelves upon shelves of brews from all over the place, with individual samples available for each beer. Want to try six different beers? Make your own six pack and receive a 7% discount on the price of the six individual bottles.

The very expansive selection made choosing a warm up beer quite a task, but eventually I settled on Spaten's Optimator, a highly regarded beer that I had yet to try. Into the cooler it went, along with the following:

Brooklyn Summer Ale
Dogfish Head Burton Baton
Fraoch Heather Ale
Clipper City Red Sky at Night
Dogfish Head Aprihop
Warbird Thunderbolt Wheat
Unibroue 16
Black Dog Ale

As it turns out, I didn't make it to my warm-up beer until the end of the night; Courtney took the lead and led us on a beer tour de force, with lessons in history and chemistry along the way. It was quite the learning experience.

Normally, we try to at least pretend we're accomplishing something. But last night we were basically just drinking. Once we had reached the end of our samples, we decided to write what stuck with us. HBG Jim (I think...) suggested four word reviews. I'll give that a shot.

Brooklyn Summer Ale: I've certainly had better.
Dogfish Head Burton Baton: See also Conquest Ale.
Fraoch Heather Ale: This one? Mashed Potatoes.
Clipper City Red Sky at Night: So.. was this red?
Dogfish Head Aprihop: I'd try this again.
Warbird Thunderbolt Wheat: Airplanes! Indiana! Sheet-Metal Blonde!
Unibroue 16: Nice work, Uni Dudes.
Black Dog Ale: I now remember nothing.

So there you have it. 4 word reviews (almost). Hopefully you can make out which beers I liked.

Thanks to Courtney at the Hop Shop for the beer lessons, and to Jim at INtake for the exposure.

Thanks to INtake, and welcome new readers!

Ok, so obviously the big news here at HoosierBeerGeek.com is the wonderful INtake article that came out today. This was the featured picture from our photoshoot a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to Matt Gonzales and Tom Klubens for the spot. Thanks, too, to Neal Taflinger, better known as Taffy, for letting me put my two cents into his weekly pub crawl.


If you're new to the site because of the article, we would first like to say, "Welcome." Just to give you a bit of history, I started this blog back in August (see Archives) with the intent of reviewing some beers and trying to expose people to new kinds of my favorite beverage. My good friend Jason then quickly came up with the idea for both of us to get together and bring on a rotating guest to do the reviews. With that, the Knights of the Beer Roundtable (or KOTBR, for short) was born. We held our first roundtable, then Jim joined in on the second, and has been with us ever since. Kelly became the first female perspective to the blog, then most recently, Renee. We've had some previous coverage in Indianapolis Monthly and INtake, but never to this extent. We recently turned this into a "group" blog where we can all post directly, changed the URL to simply hoosierbeergeek.com (no www.), and we're in the process of doing some redesigning. We frequent Deano's in Fountain Square and The Hop Shop on the northside, but we're also making a habit of getting out to try more Hoosier brewpubs and taverns. We go out on the 2nd & 4th Thursdays of the month. To see our upcoming reviews, please check out the column to the right. We always invite you, our readers, to join us, too, and recently, some have started to.


So, again, welcome. We hope you find the blog enjoyable, because we sure have a lot of fun putting it together. Bookmark it, and make it regular reading material. Please feel free to leave comments and ask questions. You can always email me directly at christophermaples@yahoo.com.


Cheers!

Read All About It!!

Not sure if we're supposed to make this public (shhh!!), but the Knights of the Beer Roundtable are going to be a big part of the cover story on the Jan. 18th edition of INtake, which is about Indy-based bloggers. Be sure to pick up a copy. Jason even brought us some special "props" for the occasion, and you'll only be able to see those in the magazine.

We did a kick-ass photo shoot for the story today at Deano's (whose service appears to have recovered from their lull last week, and they are now back to their good old selves), and I'll be damned if we didn't have to drink two pints of Delirium Tremens and/or Delirium Nocturnum before we could get through the shoot. When the photographer arrived, we poured our first pint. While he was getting his equipment ready, we launched into an internal review of the beer amongst ourselves. By the time he was ready to shoot, most of our pints were gone, so we had to refill. 2 pints of Delirium Tremens/Nocturnum (8.5% ABV each) + 5 empty stomachs = 5 very happy & slightly buzzed beer geeks.

We were intending to actually do a real review of the beer, but I think we all got caught up in our new-found fame to take any notes on the beer to post. You know, it's tough being a big, famous, superstar these days, what with our regular media darling status and all :) (And speaking of media darling status, if you get the chance, check out the WTHR-13 Community Focus segment next Tuesday the 9th at 12:45pm to see me in action for my real job)

And today also marked the very first time that all 5 KOTBR were together. We had had 4 of us together on a few rare occasions, but never all 5.

Anyway, we think this is a good time to let our loyal readers know that we're going to be making some changes to the HBG site. First, Jason is working on a rockin' new banner and redesign of the site. Second, I'm going to turn this into a "group" blog, whereas all five of us can post directly to the site, without the other 4 having to send things to me. Third, (and this is mostly to accomodate our schedules) we are going to set regularly-scheduled days for Roundtable Reviews, beginning this month. Once we have those dates determined, we will post them on the site, as well. Our fourth change is to make a big push for our readers to join us on Roundtable nights - we want to meet you! Don't be intimidated because you don't think you can talk beer - we couldn't either when we began - but we have fun learning. And remember - we're beer "geeks", not beer "snobs". A fifth change is to get back to the basics of "Hoosier" Beer Geekdom. We're still gonna frequent Deano's, but we're also going to be doing quite a few reviews from local brewpubs, and rating more Indiana beers. So let us know if you like the changes - we know you're reading because we can tell from our SiteMeter log - so feel free to make some comments! We'll try to roll the changes out in the next couple of weeks, so bare with us.

So Many Publications, So Little Beer

When it rains, it pours! Hoosier Beer Geek grabs a mention in yet another Indy publication in this week's InTake. The article is about how sometimes good taste and passion for a subject matter (ie, beer) is sometimes confused as snobbery. A part of the article focuses on Courtney Hall, owner of my favorite beer store - The Hop Shop, and his passion for good beer. In a sidebar to the article, Courtney lists his suggested resources for reading about good beer, and HBG rounds out his top three (following beeradvocate.com & indianabeer.com). Thanks, Courtney - we love you, too!