Category: Breweries

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Taxman Brewing – Circle City Zymurgy Wort Share

What a great day! Yesterday Circle City Zymurgy had the pleasure of joining Taxman Brewing in Bargersville for a wort share. We took the base wort for Exemption, Taxman’s Belgian Tripel, and made it our own. Altogether we had 12 homebrewers join in on the wort share in the parking lot of the brewery. In April, we will sample the different beers and choose the top six. The six winners get free tickets to Taxman’s Death and Taxes on April 21st and get to pour their beer there!

The base wort for Exemption was a great pick as it allowed us to make it into almost anything. We could choose to add extra grains, we chose our own hops, yeast, and other ingredients. A few of us chose to stick with a Belgian Tripel, some adding special/secret ingredients to make it different. We also have a black IPA, a milkshake IPA, maibock, and other styles in the making so you can really see the creativity we get from some of our homebrewers!

Most of us showed up a bit before 10:00 AM and we all had our beer into our fermenters and started cleaning up by around 2:00 PM. As you could imagine, we discussed what we were making, the Taxman beers we had throughout the day, and what we were going to do with our beer throughout the next few weeks.

Once everyone got their equipment stored away, Colin and David walked us through the brewery. We saw a room full of a ton of “clean” beers aging in different liquor and wine barrels and a room full of sour beers also aging in barrels. We went to another building where the grainmill, brew kettle, HLT, mash tun, brite tanks, and fermenters were stored. Colin allowed us to walk up the stairs and check out the main brewing area to look at the tanks and walked us by all of the huge fermenters.

After the tour, some of us finished up by going to the taproom and sampling some more Taxman beers and got some much needed food after our brew day! The Red Wine Barrel Aged Qualified and wilf-fermented Certified were definitely a big hit among the club. A lot of us had the Barnyard Burger which had a slice of pork belly and over-easy egg on top of the burger. Delicious!

Circle City Zymurgy wishes to thank Taxman brewing and all others involved in making this happen. We had a great time!

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Indiana On Tap Tasting Society Recap – An Outpouring of Love

On Friday July 21, Circle City Zymurgy participated in the July gathering of the Indiana On Tap Tasting Society. The goal of these events is to showcase our state’s fine breweries and/or the beers available throughout the state by bringing something special and different to each event. In fact, no two monthly events are the same. The events are intimate–think more of a swanky party instead of a beer festival. What’s cool about this is attendees had plenty of opportunities to talk to the brewery staff and the brewers themselves. As a bonus, these tasting society events are also Indiana’s premier venue for trading rare and hard-to-find beers from all over the state and the nation.

CCZ members including myself, Nick Boling, Jonathan Marting, and Matt and Lauren Wolford had a great time pouring our beer and representing the club. Joining us were Rhinegeist Brewery from Cincinnati and Creatures of Habit from Anderson, IN. For this event, Indiana on Tap partnered with Bottom’s Up, which meant we got to serve our beer on their awesome draft system. Thank you to Bottom’s Up for providing pouring enjoyment for our crew! As the indoor temperature rose to meet that of the outside, the event space filled with throngs of thirsty beer geeks. Having the premier pouring space, most guests queued up in front of the Circle City Zymurgy booth. We started the night with a broad spectrum of brewing styles for the tasters; Russ Der Cogburn Lemon Shandy, A Southerner in London (A hazelnut praline English mild), Meeb’s Milk Stout and Grapefruit Baby Doll (An American pale ale enhanced with Amoretti Ruby Red Grapefruit artisanal flavoring). The CCZ line quickly became THE place to be with lines surpassing all other pouring stations for a majority of the night. As the night progressed so did our lineup of tasty malt beverages, such as Mr. Mild Mannered (English Mild), Juicy Lucy New England IPA, 124 Conch Street (Pineapple Wheat) and Tears of a Wookiee American pale ale). All told, the CCZ crew floated 8 kegs in less than 3 hours, while Rhinegeist and Creatures of Habit had a sufficient supply of brews on tap. The ambiance was a hip and cool with party tunes provided by DJ 3pm, beer flavored cupcakes by Tipsy Turvey of Anderson, handcrafted pirogi from The Pirogi Truck and craft hard sodas from Garden Party Botanicals.

Overall this was a very successful night of pouring for CCZ and the club members who participated. With this being a monthly event, there will be plenty of opportunities for other members of the club to participate, however, be prepared to meet the high expectations set by the inaugural crew and remember to bring PLENTY of beer!

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Thank you to CCZ member Rob Ecker for this recap. This blog post has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Meeb’s Milk Stout Tapping

Come out to the Noble Order taproom in Zionsville on June 29 as they officially tap the second of our collaboration beers with Noble Order Brewing Company! CCZ member Nick Boling and Noble Order Brewmaster Mike Miller have collaborated to bring you Meeb’s Milk Stout. Based on Nick’s National Homebrew Competition-finalist recipe, this is a smooth, balanced, excellent stout. A portion of the sales from this beer go to support club activities; so you get to sample an excellent beer and help out Circle City Zymurgy. Meeb’s Milk Stout will be available until the keg runs out, so make sure you get it while you can!

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Brew-Ha-Ha 2017 in the Books!

The Phoenix Theatre’s 22nd annual Brew-Ha-Ha was this past Saturday. Every CCZ member who poured and attended had so much fun at Indiana’s oldest beer festival. We ended up floating four kegs and several bottles of sours during our special VIP-tapping (everyone seemed to love our sours). Even a malfunctioning Randall and a mid-festival rain shower couldn’t put a damper on our spirits. It’ll be interesting to see how the festival changes if and when they move it to the new site of the Phoenix theatre. But as long as it maintains its intimate size, quirkiness, and residential charm, it should remain one of the best beer festivals in the city.

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2016 Indiana Brewers Cup…That’s a Wrap!

The Indiana Brewers Cup is kind of a huge deal. Over 1500 entries (both homebrew and professional) are judged by dozens of certified judges. Competition is fierce, and should you happen to win here, you can consider yourself one of the best homebrewers in the Midwest. Think of every other festival as the regular season and this as the World Series. Even though Circle City Zymurgy has only been existence for four months, we came in to this granddaddy of homebrew competitions hoping we could make some noise. And while we came short of our ultimate goal of being crowned homebrew club of the year, we still had a very strong showing (and a heck of a lot of fun).

The tasting reception before the actual awards ceremony always promises a good time. It is set up like a low-key beer festival, only this time breweries and homebrew clubs are treated as equals. There six commercial breweries and eight homebrew clubs sampled out some of their best beer, cider, and mead (and even barrel-aged coffee!). Highlights of the evening included McClure’s Orchard’s Paige’s Peaches and Razzled (a gold medal winner that night), The Tap’s Double Barrel Buckshot (a smoked roggenbier), and the Broad Ripple Brewpub’s Welcome to Helles (the homebrew best of show recipe from 2015). Circle City Zymurgy was there pouring, nestled right between The Tap and New Day Craft (and gleefully smuggling samples from each. We served a California Common, a gose with cucumber and jalapeno, a Flanders red with cherries, a Belgian sour with crab apples, and a Hefeweizen run through a Randall stuffed with blueberries. Lines were long and steady and our beers were roundly praised. Speaking of which, did you know that Circle City Zymurgy is on Untappd? You can check out all of our offerings and review our beers. Your support is valuable!

As for the awards ceremony, five Circle City Zymurgy members took eight ribbons, and we finished as the second most successful club at the event. Club results can be found on our events page and Full results can be found here. The awards ceremony got off to an emotional start when the Godmother of Brewing in Indiana (and, full disclosure, my employer) Anita Johnson won the Golden Growler Award (think of it as sort of a lifetime achievement award). It was also exciting and rewarding to see several of our professional compatriots bring home medals. Friends of the club Bier Brewery, Tow Yard Brewing Company, Grand Junction Brewing Company, Flix Brewhouse Carmel, McClure’s Orchard, and New Day Craft all emerged highly successful.

But Circle City Zymurgy saved the best for last with our fun, rip-roaring, porkified after party hosted by our own Brady Smith. We had seven excellent beers on tap (including two award winners from that night), and the appetizers were a revelation. Highlights included bacon donut hole skewers, sopressata, and manchego cheese, and deviled scotch eggs. Outside people were hanging out, playing corn hole and beer pong, and enjoying a rare mild July evening. All this was soundtracked by the live bluegrass stylings of The Barefoot Hollers. From what I can remember, it was an excellent party (did I mention seven beers on tap?).

Whether they won awards or not, we are proud of all the club members who participated in the Brewers Cup. Their help coordinating our plan of attack and their willingness to step out of their comfort zones helped make this such a success. We only spent two months planning for the Brewers Cup and we still ended up with nearly seventy entries and eight awards. From here the sky is the limit.