28 February 2010

Coming Soon to Broad Ripple: Another Hoosier Brewery

As the home of Broad Ripple Brewpub, Brugge Brasserie, and Barley Island Broad Ripple, Broad Ripple has become Indiana craft beer headquarters. As further proof to that claim, You'll soon be able to add the Scotty Wise/Mike DeWeese/Jon Lang/David Waldman brewery project to that list.

With the help of this article from IBJ.com and the details DeWeese has dropped here at HBG (here and here), we can now lay out the basics. The brewery is a joint effort between Wise (owner of the Scotty's Brewhouse chain of restaurants), and a group calling themselves Beer Baron LLC, featuring DeWeese (former owner of the previous incarnation of the downtown BW3's/Badaboomz/J. Gumbo's), Jon Lang (former head brewery at Barley Island/GABF Gold Medal Winner), and David Waldman.


In a recent conversation with Wise we were able to discover the location for the brewery - 1021 Broad Ripple Avenue, in the space that previously housed the Broad Ripple location of Sunflower Market. Conveniently located at the crossroads of the Monon Trail and Broad Ripple Avenue, the location's ample parking, extensive floorspace, and already built-in wall coolers seem like a promising start.


The brewery's bones come from a previous Indiana brewery effort - the group only had to go as far as Fort Wayne to acquire equipment for the recently closed Warbird Brewing Company. No mention has been made of the brewery's plans to bottle or can their offerings.


What remains to be seen is how the group plan to manage their brewing efforts - Wise expects the brewery to produce four or five styles for his restaurants (under the Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Co. label) in addition to the beers being produced for the Beer Baron LLC Group. Wise admitted that it's a question that has yet to be answered.

The combined experience of the group should be its strong suit. Wise's business acumen combined with DeWeese's extensive beer background and Lang's award winning brewing experience make sense on paper. "This is a new thing for me," said Wise. "We're still figuring it out."

8 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh! This is going to be epic! Such a great idea! The more the merrier. Sometime soon I need to get back out to the brewhouse!

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  2. Couldn't be more excited about this. A perfect space for a perfect venture. Opening day can't come too soon. Did I say I was excited?

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  3. i'm not as keen on the concept. my take is we have enough options in this area. adding another option to this area isn't necessairly a good thing IMO. my thoughts.
    1. Brugge, Chumleys, Broad RIpple Brew Pub & Barley provides more than enough options in this area. Adding another player to the mix (in this area) won't help anyone.
    2. I personally dislike Broad Ripple (primiarly b/c I am old). I like Broad Ripple Brew Pub for a few beers and dinner and then we quickly get out of the area.
    i like the concept but I'd like to see them venture elsewhere. i know they have a built in audience in broad ripple but drive by Granite City on a given Friday or Saturday and look at the crowd (for fairly avg beer IMO).
    thoughts?

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  4. Is this a production brewery? Or will there be in house serving (more than a tasting room.) I am a bit surprised to see it land in high rent Broadripple if the primary business is to provide beer for Scotty's and the products of the yet to be named company.
    Glad to see that Jon Lang will be brewing again.

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  5. Some of that info can be found in the IBJ report - It would be poor practice to lift everything from their article.

    http://www.ibj.com/scottys-brewhouse-owner-planning-microbrewery/PARAMS/article/18390

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  6. Oh Joy, another reason for me to go to where I hate going, Broad Ripple...

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  7. Thank God Jon Lang is brewing again! Can't wait to taste the next of his impressive beers.

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  8. I know one of the owners of the brewing company and they have a great business plan. They looked at a lot of other spots, but for the audeince they are targeting and the amount of beer they are wanting to produce, i doubt they could have found a better place. I also know that they are close to selling out there shares in the company.

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