A brief report on this week's Brewers of Indiana Guild meeting.

On Wednesday, there was a board meeting of the Brewers of Indiana Guild, and I accompanied NABC's Blake Montgomery to Indianapolis for the occasion. He went out and did sales guy stuff, and I spent the afternoon at Sun King with the other directors.

Not all the topics we discuss can be public knowledge, but broad themes are fair game. As with any organization, we have our internal housekeeping tasks to perform. These days, much activity has to do with the explosion of commercial brewing in Indiana. The number of working breweries in Indiana has more than doubled during the past three years.

Among other tasks, the Guild hopes to improve communications with all craft brewers in the state, improve promotion of the segment, continue to successfully lobby the legislature, commence a mentoring program and have every brewery in attendance at our two biggest yearly fests. Toward these ends, we're organizing committees. I'm on the membership committee, and this makes me quite happy.

I'm also glad that as we move forward into the emerging era of Indiana brewing multiplication, one of my pet ideas is gaining traction. We're not there yet, but the day draws nearer.

I wrote about it earlier this year.

Now that Indiana is a state fairly blessed with brewers, should non-Indiana beers still be a component of these three yearly Guild fests?

Of course … under conditions and circumstances channeled by the guild itself, which to my way of thinking, means orienting guest beers according to their own state guild structures, and not by their Indiana wholesalers.

My solution has the merit of gently nudging Indiana wholesalers sponsoring an Indiana guild-administered festival to better support those Indiana brewers already on their sales rosters. It also provides a compelling reason for other state Guilds to become better organized, and to refine their message.

Just picture it: Instead of a wholesaler tent at the BIG Microbrewers Festival, with craft beers from America jumbled together, there could be separate tents for guilds from Kentucky, Michigan and other states.