Hows my little Indy traveller?

For Laura's birthday this year I decided to keep things local-ish and simple. After discussing several options we decided to head over to Indianapolis to drink our way around the city. I had heard of several wineries and breweries in the area and we decided to make a day of it. I think easily one of my favorite things about visiting new fermenteries is comparing them to others we've been to. We discuss after almost every place, what's working, whats not, what we liked and what we didn't, not to mention we like talking about the different drinks we had a each place.

After my second and more successful shot at chocolate crepes we headed to Chateau Thomas Winery. Maybe I've been brainwashed but I think its absurd for midwestern wineries to be making wines using grapes from California. We've been to a couple of wineries like this now and they always say its because grapes don't grow here. Which is obviously BS otherwise there wouldn't be a growing and thriving local wine scene in the Midwest, this industry has done a fine job of embracing their locally made/grown roots. Anyway, I could go on about this. Altogether I wouldn't go back, their wines were comparable to the same varietals (grown in the same place!) I can buy for $8-$12 from any store, so whats the point?

Our next stop was New Day Meadery. This place stole my heart quickly. Their small 50's modern design worked well for their location and style the brand fits into, something different. And boy did they nail it. They have a few hard ciders, several experimental carbonated meads, and a few traditional still meads. The place was very inspiring because of all their different ingredients they were using in their mead (honey wine). I was shocked and excited when I saw they were making mead with hops. They had two on the list, one was actually really close to tasting like a lighter beer. Ah! mmm... I wish I could live closer to this joint so that I could visit more often, I think next time I'll get a keg to go.

After that we headed over to flat 12 brewing, which leaned towards the hoppier side of life, Laura and I usually don't prefer those beer styles, although we still found one that was delicious enough to fill a growler. The real highlight from that stop was the Meatery across the street. It smelled heavenly. We tried a couple of sausages and walked out with bacon, braunschweiger, Italian sausage, and andouille sausage. Since we hardly ever buy meat this was a real treat and it made me wish I lived near a butcher that employed the creative portion of their brain. The Smoking goose was Laura's favorite stop by a long shot. We will return again if we're ever in town.

Our next stop was our favorite brewery stop of the whole visit, Bier Brewery. Of the 12 beers we sampled we enjoyed all but one. Which made it hard to choose just one for our growler. Since our stomachs were empty at this point we didn't hang out for the desired pint. One new Stainless growler later we took off feeling quite happy, and a bit sad since we don't ever find ourselves in that part of Indy ever.

After that we split a flight from Brugge Brassier. They are in the hip neighborhood Broad Ripple. The beers were unique and intriguing, one was pink and made with boysenberry and another that was had was a boozy 12%er with cardamon. That was neat because the spice completely hid that boozy character. I'll be excited to go back sometime to eat and drink.

Our last brew stop was at Thr3e Wise Men in Broad Ripple. This is a brewery that needs to get more taps going. With 6 taps, two of them IPAs and a Coffee Beer we were limited to a brown ale or two lighter styles. They two beers that we tried were solidly good which is why I wanted more. Laura and I split some appetizers here and relaxed for awhile before we left with our third growler for the day.

We finished Laura's Birthday with a wonderful dinner at The Iron Gate in Crawfordsville and enjoyed some of my recently thawed birthday cake at home in our new feeties. Altogether it was a grand day.

There were multiple points in the day were I happily reaffirmed why it is I married this wonderful 29 year-old. We get along so good, we have so many similar interests, and we both love to eat, drink, and smile. Cheers!

Not a bad haul for the day!