News update from the Brewers of Indiana Guild.

I'm proud to serve on the board of directors of the Brewers of Indiana Guild. Currently my committee assignments are Festival policy (co-chair) and Membership. As most readers already know, I'm bullish about Indiana-brewed beer, and believe we're headed in the right direction.

Below are excerpts of general interest from the most recent board news update. Note that we're not far away from the first big event of 2015:

Winterfest 2015
January 31, 2015
Indiana State Fairgrounds
1202 E 38th St. Indianapolis

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From the Executive Director

ALMOST THERE! We are very close to crossing a milestone. As of this writing, Brewers of Indiana Guild has 97 active brewery members. We’ve come a long way since Broad Ripple Brewpub opened in 1990.

Please let us know if your brewery is visited by the Health Department (state or county), or the office of the State Chemist. In any case, please cooperate with the agent and get a business card. Health Department visits have become fairly common. Officials often use "kitchen" standards for our breweries, but so far the nuisance has not developed into real problems. The Chemist is potentially more concerning as they are looking at spent grain issues, hinting they are formulating new policies. Please keep us informed.

From the President

As a Guild, we have been working on a great number of things, but as a volunteer Board with only two paid staff members there is only so much that we can accomplish. This year we formed a number of committees that are all chaired and co-chaired by a Board member. Our standing committees are: Finance, Government Relations, Membership, Marketing, Education, Festival Policy, and B.I.G.'s Partnership with Purdue. Our plan is to have bi-montly meetings that fall between the months that we hold Board meetings.

I have been fortunate to participate in several Gathering of the Guilds meetings hosted by the Brewers Association and am happy to report that Indiana is on track and moving in the right direction. With the addition of our Communications Director, Tristan Schmid, getting the word out about it all will be more timely and organized.

Marketing & Media News

There's a lot going on with our new public awareness campaign, Drink Indiana Beer, which we launched at Great American Beer Fest and have gotten a lot of positive feedback on. That campaign and other outreach efforts have netted good exposure for Indiana breweries and the beer you brew.

A few quick notes:

Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick airs an interview about the Drink Indiana Beer campaign tonight at 7:30pm on WFYI and Sunday at 11am on WTHR. We'll post a link to the video on our site, drinkIN.beer, once it's streaming.

Indiana Public Media's Noon Edition hosted Doug from Upland, Abel from Quaff On!, and me for an hour-long discussion about the state of craft beer in Indiana. Listen to the chat here.

Indiana Public Media also aired a 4-minute TV segment about the industry's growth, which you can watch here.

The Guild is running a half-page ad promoting the Drink Indiana Beer campaign and website in the next annual edition of the Indiana Office of Tourism Development magazine, Honest-to-Goodness Indiana. The magazine goes to tens of thousands of people across Indiana and in neighboring states. We'll let you know more once it's published.

We're developing an exclusive statewide partnership with the American Red Cross to promote fire safety in homes in our communities this holiday season and will share more about this collaborative effort next month.

Be sure to follow the Guild on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (we're using the hashtag #INbeer for the conversation about Indiana beer).