Straight reprint -- a press release from The Guild. If you're in or near Indianapolis, get some.

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Tomlinson Tap Room to feature Indiana's Great American Beer Festival winners 

Medal-winning Indiana beers on draught beginning October 28

Tomlinson Tap Room, the craft beer bar run in partnership between Brewers of Indiana Guild and Indianapolis City Market, will serve a number of Hoosier-brewed beers that won medals at Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver last month.

Tomlinson Tap Room's menu exclusively features Indiana beer. Beginning Wednesday, October 28, the following GABF medal-winners will be available during Tomlinson Tap Room's regular hours (Monday - Thursday: 2:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.; Friday - Saturday: 12:00 noon - 9:00 p.m.):

• Bier Brewery - Sanitarium (Belgian Quad)
• Flix Brewhouse - Generation Alt (Altbier)
• Mad Anthony Brewing Co. - Auburn Lager
• Sun King Brewing Co. - Sun Light Cream Ale
• The Tap Beer Co. - Electric Stinger (Honey Beer)
• Taxman Brewing Co. - Qualified (Belgian Quad)

Several winning beers were brewed in limited batches and are no longer available, but their breweries will be sending these in their place:

• Bier Brewery - 2014 Barrel-Aged Sanitarium 
• Sun King - Gin Barrel-Aged Grapefruit Jungle (IPA)
• Sun King - Tinytanic Rum Barrel-Aged Sunlight

"We're proud of the strong showing by Indiana brewers at GABF, one of the world's biggest beer festivals and most well-known competitions," said Rob Caputo, Interim Executive Director for Brewers of Indiana Guild. "Breweries in our state brought home nearly twice as many medals as expected, highlighting the variety and quality of beer produced in Indiana."

The winning beers will be available for a limited time. Menus are updated and posted daily on Tomlinson Tap Room's Twitter (@TomTapRoom) and Facebook accounts.

Award-winning breweries will also be pouring at Brewers of Indiana Guild's next beer festival, Winterfest, on Saturday, January 30, 2016 at Indiana State Fairgrounds. The event is one of three annual fundraisers for the Guild, the non-profit trade association that represents the state's craft brewing industry.

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About Brewers of Indiana Guild: Brewers of Indiana Guild was organized in 2000 to provide a unifying voice for the craft breweries and brewpubs of Indiana. We promote public awareness and appreciation for the award-winning quality and variety of beer produced in Indiana, advocate for favorable regulatory treatment from state and federal agencies, provide support to brewers throughout the state, and, along with the City of Indianapolis, co-own Tomlinson Tap Room, where you’ll find only Indiana beers all the time. For more information, visit drinkIN.beer.

R.I.P. Fred Eckhardt.

I'm very fortunate to have met Fred Eckhardt, if only briefly. It would have been during my first of three visits to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival, circa 1995.

Someone was sponsoring a vintage Alaskan Smoked Porter tasting, and I got through the door -- how isn't clear at this late date -- and there were brewers, beer peeps, writers and just plain folks in attendance. Eckhardt was one of them, and somehow I was seated with him at a table.

Mercifully, it was the pre-smart-phone era, and with no pressing need to photograph every sampled pour from bottles that for the most part looked exactly alike, most of my time was spent listening in the hope of learning something.

Eckhardt was in full educational mode, involving total strangers in the give and take, and when it was over, I asked his opinion: What's the most influential beer you've had at the GABFs you've attended?

His answer: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout.

R.I.P. Fred Eckhardt 1926-2015 (Brookston Beer Bulletin)

Pabst: How can that much beer come pouring out of an empty suit?

So, in a category created for beers like Pabst, Pabst gets a medal for best shitty beer in America. Hate's not the word, boys. Irrelevance is. Thanks to Beer Pulse for picking this one up.

Sun King rocks the GABF.

As you may know by now, our friends at Sun King in Indianapolis kicked major league medal-amassing ass at this year's Great American Beer Festival in Denver. It reminds me of Reggie "Mr. October" Jackson in the World Series back in '77. A state that already had Three Floyds within its boundaries did not need to be introduced to the craft beer world, and yet Sun King just might have launched the salvo that boosts the Hoosier state to new credibility. Right on, guys.

The full GABF scoop comes from BeerNews.org: Great American Beer Festival 2011 awards wrap up.

Indiana had the most winning rate of medals compared to entries by state, with a 19.2 percent winning rate. Specifically, Indiana won 10 medals out of 52 total entries.

Baylor on Beer: "Far Away (So Close)"

My columns are running at LouisvilleBeer.com twice a month, on or around the 15th and the 30th. If you have not already visited the website, please do. You'll be impressed at what John and John have achieved in a very short time.

Far Away (So Close)

Sep 29, 2011

It’s time for Great American Beer Festival’s annual renewal, and while I must confess to having wonderful and enduring memories of my three trips to Denver during the 1990’s for the express purpose of attending the GABF – apart from the airport, not once did I so much as make it outside the city limits – it doesn’t interest me nearly as much now as...

BBC's Kick in the Baltic triumphs at the '08 GABF.

A hearty pat on the back (he'd prefer the rump) goes to Bluegrass Brewing Company's brewer of record at the original Shelbyville Road location.

Jerry Gnagy scored a gold medal at the recently concluded Great American Beer Festival for his Kick in the Baltic Porter, which last appeared at the Public House during the 2008 edition of Gravity Head and was tippled by the Publican on more than one occasion during its run.

It remains a favored beer style of mine, and Jerry's success has me thinking about reviving the NABC version, called Solidarity, which was last brewed too long ago. If we started lagering a batch soon, it'd be perfect for GH '09 (The Liver Olympics).

Here's a piece I wrote from a couple years back that goes into greater depth. When reading, be aware that several of the listed beers no longer are available through legal distribution channels in Indiana. They come, they go.

Baltic, Russian and Ukrainian bottled beer blast: Porter and more.

Points for pondering, courtesy of the GABF's revised style guidelines.

Early June is when breweries receive their registration packets for the annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver Colorado, which will take place this year from October 11-13.

If you’ve ever wondered, draft beers for the festival's public tasting sessions make their way to Denver in Microstar kegs via Anheuser-Busch’s distribution network. Meanwhile, beers for the medals competition judging must be bottled (or canned) and shipped separately.

It’s doubtful that NABC will participate in 2007, and this decision has nothing to do with politics or my traditional ambivalence about Charlie Papazian's empire. We’re small, money’s finite, and we feel it is better spent taking entertaining tasting trips to regional festivals like this Saturday’s 12th Annual St. Louis Microfest in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison, Wisconsin on August 11.

Having noted that, I’m always interested in the yearly tweaking of the GABF style categories and sub-categories, and for this reason I’m reprinting the text of competition manager Chris Swersey’s message to brewers. The complete style list can be viewed here.

These annual refinements represent an effort to match judging criteria to current trends and realities, and while some always represent progress – the addition of American-Style Sour strikes me as indicative of wonderful things – others denote regress, as in the case of German Oktoberfests no longer being distinguishable from Dortmunders. That's quite sad, isn't it?

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The 2007 GABF competition is just around the corner, and I hope that you will enter your beers and be a part of the fun – there’s nothing like the rush you get during the awards ceremony on Saturday afternoon. Be sure to look over the style list and the style descriptions very carefully before submitting your entry form. As usual, there are a number of big changes to the categories that need pointing out – don’t use last year’s category numbers when you complete your entry form!

I also want to point out a recent trend in American-Style Pale Ale, Strong Pale Ale, IPA and Imperial IPA entries. During the past four years, the style descriptions for the American-style Pale Ale family of beer styles have evolved to the point that the essential differences reflect alcoholic strength more than any other single quality. We have received numerous comments from brewers, judges, and consumers which indicate that there is confusion regarding the alcoholic strength of beers entered in particular categories, with respect to the brand name of the beers themselves. For example, a brewery could intentionally under-enter a strong pale ale in the pale ale category, with the idea that the beer might outclass the competition.

The GABF has no intention of policing entries for compliance by alcoholic strength. Analyzing entries is impractical and expensive, and more importantly, this role would subvert the function of the judge panel. Over the years, the judge panel has told us what makes great beer, and we plan to continue to let them. With this in mind, the judge orientation this year will include a taste calibration session that focuses on alcoholic strength, along with a reiteration of the comments that we have received regarding alcoholic strength. Please be sure to enter your beers in the appropriate category based on alcoholic strength as well as other factors.

Okay, here’s a list of some of the changes you’ll see in the style guidelines:

Category 4d – we’ve added Pumpkin Beer as a subcategory to fruit or vegetable beer.

Category 10 – Other Low Strength Ale or Lager – a new counterpart to category 73, Other Strong Ale or Lager.

Category 12 – Gluten Free Beer – This rapidly growing product segment now has its own category.

Category 13a – American-Style Sour Ale – an exciting new category for mixed fermentation beers that reflect American brewing on the cutting edge.

Category 16 – Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer – ditto.

Category 19 – Smoke-Flavored Beer – greatly expanded subcategories to reflect the broad range of German-style smoke beers.

Category 20 – International-Style Pilsener - Renamed the old European-style Pilsener to reflect the broad origins of adjunct lagers from around the world.

Category 24 - Dortmunder/European Style Export or German-Style Oktoberfest/Wiesen (Meadow) – This category reflects the current market reality that current-day German-style Oktoberfest is indistinguishable from Dortmunder or Export.

Categories 59-62 – Reorganized the Belgian-style categories based on feedback from judges and brewers from both the United States and Belgium.

Category 70b – Added an American-style Imperial Stout. We plan to continue the Pro-Am Competition this year. This is a special competition that will be judged by the same professional judge panel that evaluates all GABF entries.

Good Luck at the 2007 GABF, we'll see you in Denver this fall!