Indiana Beer Week - Day Six - Indiana Microbrewers Festival (Introducing Matt2)

What goes better than hot weather and beer? How about hot weather and craft beer? Initial numbers coming in are that they sold around four-thousand tickets for the event. Don't get me wrong, I had a fantastic time, but I think the number should be limited, and there is already talk of limiting the number of tickets for next year's event, but I am sure by then I will have already forgotten about the amount of people that were at this years event. Without much fanfare here are my highlights of the day:


What crowd?
Best new beer to me: Brass Monkey Green Tea Pale Ale. It was nice and crisp with a hint of fresh citrus fruit that came in nicely.

Best Indiana Brewer: New Albanian Brewing Company. I didn't have a bad beer from them, and it looked like they brought at least six beers with them. I've only just started to have beer from them, and I will be having more based on the beers I had at the festival. Roadtrip anyone? My two favorites were their saison and Hoptimus DIPA.

Best Firkin: Bell's Two-Hearted. If you are a fan of Two-Hearted you need to try it out of a firkin.


Tapping a firkin
Best Brewer of the Fest: I have to give it to Founders. Every single beer I had from them was a real treat. Backwoods Bastard, Red's Rye, Devil Dancer, and finally Kentucky Breakfast stout from them were all top notch, and every single beer would go in my tops list for the day.

Best Beer of the Fest: Three Floyd's Dark Lord was my favorite beer of the day. My palate was shot by the end of the day, but I was still able to pick up on so many of the nuances of the beer. I could still taste chocolate and coffee notes that were helped by dark fruit and lingering toasted malt in the finish. It was a nice way to finish out my day. I wasn't complaining about them filling our glasses with alpha king in line either.

I had a great day, and I want to say a big thank you to the people that put this together every single year, and I am very excited that Indiana beer is heading in the right direction.

Cheers!
Matt

New Beer Festival on the Horizon

This isn't official yet, but both parties will be meeting next week to talk logistics and are interested in moving forward. It looks like Dads, Inc. - as you all know is my non-profit - is going to team up with The Hop Shop again, but this time to host a microbrew festival sometime in the early Spring of next year. This would be a charity event, similar to this Saturday's Brew-Ha-Ha is for The Phoenix Theater, with proceeds from the event going to Dads, Inc. Again, I don't have many details as of right now and it isn't official, but as soon as it is, I'll post the specifics.