Hoosier Beer Geek Sixpack interview with Hawcreek Brewing Company

In the years I've been writing for Hoosier Beer Geek Indiana beer has far exceeded my expectations in a very few short years.  What was once just a handful of better beer bars and even fewer breweries is now filled with great beer on tap all over the state and now over 50 operating breweries and twenty more in the permitting stage.  One of Indiana's newest breweries is Hawcreek Brewing Company in Hope, Indiana.  I grew up not far from Hope, and I am very excited to see them open up near my old hometown.

1) Who are you and where do you work? The four of us are Josh & Nicole Bontrager and Abram & Jacquie Carman. We collectively own/run the brewery but our day jobs are scattered across the spectrum. Josh works in the auto industry, Nicole in childcare, Abe is currently serving our country in Kuwait and Jacquie is a freelance photographer.

2) For people who are unfamiliar with Hawcreek Brewing Company, can you give us some background about the company? How did it start? What was the inspiration? As I mentioned above, HBC is owned by the four of us. Josh and I (Jacquie) are brother and sister and our spouses round out the partnership. We initially became interested in home brewing and discovered a love for great beer and the making of it over the course of about 18 months of experimenting with a turkey fryer and a big ol’ cooler. We jumped straight into all grain brewing when we started our home brew journey and really developed a passion for crafting excellent tasting and interesting recipes.

Over time, we realized we were spending a lot of time and, let’s be honest, money on our beers whilst receiving a lot of positive feedback from friends and family. The four of us began dreaming about turning our passion for brewing into something greater – into more of an investment - and one November evening decided we would put our hopes and dreams for the future down on paper. This eventually turned into our business plan.

Our inspiration is our family. Working collectively on this brewery and brainstorming ideas for making our beer better have really drawn the four of us, aw well as our two young children, closer. We spend a lot of time together! Fortunately, we all get along great so you won’t hear us complaining about pulling long hours.

3) Can you talk about the brewing process for Hawcreek Brewing? Do you have a mission or a theme around your beers? How does your creative process work when thinking about brewing a new style?

Brew day starts by getting everything organized - while the water is getting to temperature we sanitize all of the brewing and fermentation components, crush all the grains and weigh all of the hops. We do an all grain mash, boil the wort and then cool. Everything is transferred via a pump system. After cooling, into the fermenter it goes and the yeast is pitched.

We do our best to make every batch exactly the same as the time before. We stay true to all of our recipes and make sure that everything we can control stays the same so it is close as possible to what we have designed.

Our mission is to simply make really good beer that is clean, flavorful and enjoyable to the palate as well as visually appealing. We don't really have a theme to any of our beers other than trying to make what we would want to drink and what we think other people will also enjoy. When trying a new style we really do our research on how to attain the intended style. Of course,  we love trying as many beers in that similar style as possible.  We try to figure out what we like and don't like in the other beers we try and then attempt to put our own little spin on it.

Our main focus is making a very drinkable beer that everyone will enjoy.

4) What should people know about Hawcreek Brewing Company?

What a question! I suppose we want everyone to know that we are all about family, having a good time and enjoying what life has to offer. Of course, we believe everyone should also enjoy great beer!

5) Opening a brewery certainly isn't easy, but can you talk about some highs and lows for Hawcreek Brewing to this point?

Some high points have been sharing this experience with family and friends. We have received so much support and so much cheering on. We have been able to work on getting this brewery going with our best friends and it has certainly brought the four of us closer. Of course, a high point is the satisfaction of receiving that teeny tiny piece of paper, the brewer’s permit, in the mail one Wednesday afternoon. What a great moment!

In all honesty, there haven’t been many lows. Building the system was sometimes frustrating and, well, irritating, but there wasn’t any point at which we felt we should give up. The licensing process was somewhat painful but, again, not enough to deter us from this dream of ours.

6) What beer are you proudest of? Which of your beers is your personal favorite? Why?

Each of our four flagship beers (Four Founders Wheat, Doghouse Pale Ale, Chaos IPA, Little Town Brown) is a source of pride for us. These are recipes we have fine-tuned over the course of the last 18 months and we are really proud of each of them. I think each of the four of us would say we are most proud of a different beer – Josh would likely say Chaos; Abe would say Four Founders; Jacquie would say JPA (Jac’s Pumpkin Ale – look for it next Fall) or Little Town Brown; Nicole would say all of them. Since I, Jacquie, am writing this I have to say my personal favorite is Little Town Brown. It is a subtle marriage of two of my favorite flavors, beer and coffee, so naturally I could drink a few pints.

BONUS: While we are new to the industry, we have felt so welcomed already. We are incredibly excited about learning more about the ins and outs of the industry, making connections and enjoying the great beer our state has to offer. We are proud of the progress we have made thus far and are really looking forward to growing as a brewery over the coming months and years. 

We want to thank the people behind Hawcreek Brewing Company for answering our questions, and we wish them the best in the future.  

KOTBR #146 - NKOTB and the Bee's Knees

Gina wrote...

First, my apologies for no photos on this post.  I recommend you go and see for yourself!

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Brett Canaday and Tia Agnew, owners of New Day Meadery, in their Fountain Square tasting room. They unofficially got their start in 2001 as a hobby and spent some time perfecting their mead and cider recipes and officially organized the brand in 2004.  Their first public offering was in May 2006 in Elwood, Indiana.  Today, their small but mighty crew of three full-time and four part-time employees are making quite a name for themselves in the beer community as well as their current home community of Fountain Square.

Mead is wine made from honey, and honey is made from bees, correct?  So are they COVERED IN BEES? As it turns out, Brett and Tia don’t keep bees as part of their commercial business.  Though they did keep bees while working on their recipes, upon commercial opening, Brett thought “it would be a better idea to let expert beekeepers be experts.”  So currently, all of New Day’s honey is purchased from Wildflower Ridge Honey Farm in Anderson.  As they are growing, however, they are beginning to outgrow the Farm’s offering of approximately 250 hives and will eventually be adding other keepers, such as Clover Blossom Honey, which services around 2000 hives.

Those numbers seem awfully large, right?  250 hives!  That is a lot of honey!  Yes, it is.  A hive can produce between 50 and 100 pounds of honey per year.  New Day uses three barrels of honey per month, and those aren’t the beer barrels you may be thinking of; they are the 55-gallon drums.  (That beer barrel you may be thinking of, the 1/2 barrel, holds approximately 15.5 gallons).

Changing and/or adding suppliers, you say?  Won’t that make a difference in the flavor?  Well, yes.  “Honey is different, even off the same hives,” says Canaday.  In traditional unfruited meads, you may be able to tell differences between early and late season in the honey. Traditional meads will impart those differences much more than fruit meads because of the nectars specific to different blossoms.  This is something New Day hopes to explore more at a later time.  But for now, they are looking to maximize their new production space, now in Indianapolis.

Wait, isn’t this a beer website?

Sure!  But we love Brett and Tia AND their meads and ciders.  Plus, some of their process is just like brewing, and they use some of the same ingredients that we love, like hops and yeast.  In fact, just about the only thing they can’t use in their production is grains.  Wineries (New Day is filed as a winery) are prohibited by federal law to use grains in their production.  Zero.  None.  Nada.

Production can also be a little different.  Though New Day's meads are pretty much honey-and-water fermented, it is technically the choice of the brewer (I think the mead and cider makers are still called that) to boil this concoction or not. “Whereas breweries will brew to extract the fermentable sugars and make them available for fermentation, for us, honey is water soluble.  You blend it with water and it is ready to ferment,” said Brett.  It isn’t exactly that simple.  It is still a hand-crafted art.  It takes skill to produce and honey isn’t always cooperative.  If it is too sweet, it won’t ferment.  Air is key.

Wine yeast is often used to make mead, but New Day is looking into using more beer yeast, which was used in their Snap Dragon.  Snap Dragon is also made with coriander, orange peel. apricots and honey.  All that along with Hallertau hops and you’ve got a mighty tasty mead.   4.2 Mugs.

Meg wrote...

I learned a lot about mead during our recent visit to New Day Meadery in Fountain Square. Did you know they use 1500-2000 pounds of honey each month? Did you know that "wineries" are forbidden to use grains? I also learned that I love Snap Dragon; leave it to the beer geeks to pick one of the only meads made with hops (hallertau) and Belgian Wit yeast. It had some very nice spice to the finish and gentle flortal hints up front. I highly recommend stopping by the next time you are in the area. Try a flight so you can experience some of the unique offerings. The knowledgeable staff will walk you through the menu. 4.269 mugs.

P.S. It should be noted that if you are a gamer, they have a wonderful semi-private backroom with a pretty large table.

Kristin wrote...

New Day Meadery...this place does not know a stranger. Always friendly, always accommodating, always willing to chit-chat it up. The place has a vibe like no other. At one time, you can have a group of friends gaming at the back table, a couple having a romantic date at a table for two, and a bachelorette party sampling at the bar. Oh, and everyone is having a fantastic time. Owners Brett and Tia have poured their everything into New Day, and it's terribly evident.

On this ocassion, we sampled Snap Dragon, a honey and apricot wine fermented with orange peel, coriander, Hallertau HOPS!, and Belgian Wit yeast. That's right, hops...right into a wine. It was delicious. The wine poured a nice gold color, and the nose was a little spicy, and a little sweet...definitely lured me in. It was very drinkable, refreshing, not too sweet, and the Belgian yeast definitely came through for a bit of a zip. Snap Dragon was a perfect choice for the beautiful fall evening.

I have to mention that New Day has the Apiary Room, the perfect space for any special event. It's reasonably priced at $60/hour, and it can hold up to 30 seated folks. I was especially drawn to the large table - it would be perfect for a gaming session. :)

And back to the Snap Dragon...4.3 mugs!

Beer Travels: Moeder Lambic

Jake Wrote:

As part of planning the Cantillon trip, I knew I wanted to find a Belgian beer bar. Based on the recommendation of a friend who toured Belgium recently, I put Moeder Lambic on the list as that bar. Moeder Lambic has two locations in Brussels. The newer location is a 10-15 minute walk from Cantillon and has 42 taps. Of the 42 taps, eight of them are sours on cask.

The menu is organized by style and there are three to five offerings for each style from around the country. However, the tap handles are all the same which I found refreshing form the usual clutter that you see here in the states.

Upon ordering my first beer, I was given a small dish filled with what looked like sunflower seeds. After I tried a small handful of the seeds, I realized that it was actually malted barley. What a great call. Buying two row in bulk has to be cheaper than bar mix or peanuts and I think it only accentuates the true beer experience.

Since I had not eaten much during to this point and had sampled four glasses at Cantillon, I was in need of some food. The main dish on the menu is quiche and it was fantastic. I stayed for a bit and had a few drinks, listened to an amazing first date conversation, and then made my way to the train station to head back to Luxembourg. I could have stayed all night, but I had a three-hour train ride back and did not want to get in too late.

Quick Hitters:

-       If you’re going to go, stay the night in Brussels and get the full experience. There was a group tasting area that was having a great time and the place was starting to fill-in around 6pm.

-       Definitely ask the bartender for suggestions. Since you are reading this on HBG, my hope is that you know better than to say, “Surprise me” or “Something light”, but, don’t let your friends do that either. Pick a style or two and ask for a suggestion.

-       The newer location is open for more hours during the day than the older one, so I suggest heading there.

-       The bathrooms are in the basement and there are no doors. If a lady makes a wrong turn, she may not realize it until she is standing roughly two feet from you and it can be startling for both parties. Pee confidently or wait for a stall.