By Tony Rehagen
John Hill, bald with a gray beard, sits at the bar, imperial pint of cask-drawn bitter before him, watching his beloved Liverpool play Paris Saint-Germain in Champions League football on the flatscreen above. A fireplace in a nearby corner warms the dark wood-paneled walls and flickers off the decorative tin ceiling on this dark and damp afternoon. The fire seems to draw patrons to this corner of the pub to eat their fish and chips and shepherd’s pie. The gathering crowd doesn’t deter Hill from periodically muttering “offsides” or “foul” in his Yorkshire accent. He orders a second drink, the porter.
It’s a scene directly out of an English country pub — precisely as Hill intended it to be when the North Yorkshire-born engineer and carpenter built Broad Ripple Brewpub himself in the eponymous bohemian neighborhood of Indianapolis in 1990. What was unintended was Hill essentially creating Indiana’s craft beer culture from the studs up. He just knew that it wouldn’t be a pub without the maltier, lower-carbonated English ales that were hard to come by in Central Indiana. “I knew nothing about brewing, didn’t even homebrew,” Hill says. “I knew Gil Alberding, who went on to become a muckity muck at MillerCoors. He knew how to brew, and I knew what it should taste like. I didn’t want to taste them all, but I had to.”
With a tap list built on full-bodied English-style ales like the Monon Porter and the epic-if-simply-named ESB, but that also branched out into fruitier wheat beers, pale ales, and IPAs — and a hearty menu of classic UK comfort food and ahead-of-its-time vegan dishes — Hill introduced Hoosiers (as the state’s natives proudly refer to themselves) to the brew pub culture that was only just starting to bubble up on the coasts. Bangers and brown ales aside, the emphasis was on a warm and welcoming atmosphere and roots in the insular Broad Ripple community. “It was a big hit at the beginning,” he says. “There was nobody else around doing it.”
Of course, that changed as the 1990s progressed, with corporate brewpubs like Rock Bottom, RAM, and Alcatraz coming to town, and a few local mom-and-pops popping up like Barley Island, Oaken Barrel, and Circle V. Even though Hill was the unwitting godfather of Indy craft beer, he didn’t shirk that responsibility. He supported all competitors, even when they started sprouting in Broad Ripple just a few blocks away. Hill founded the Indiana Brewers Guild in 2000 and has since watched it grow to more than 200 members.
Along the way, distributors, would-be investors, and even patrons have all tried to tempt Hill into opening satellite locations, franchising, and packaging. But he wouldn’t budge. “I said, no, you can’t. You can’t recreate this. It’s just a feeling,” he says. “Plus, I was too lazy to do it.”
Dawn of Sun King
Hill’s devotion to the neighborhood model left something of a void in Indy’s burgeoning craft beer scene. Brewpubs continued to flourish throughout the metro, but most of them stayed small. While 3 Floyds Brewing (Munster) and Upland Brewing (Bloomington) built national reputations from other parts of the state, the capital city still didn’t have a signature label.
“We looked around and said, ‘Major cities have a production brewery, and there isn’t one here,’” says Dave Colt, who spent the late 1990s and early 2000s with a foot in craft brewing at Circle V and the other at the corporate RAM. “Maybe we could be those guys.”
The other half of “we” was Clay Robinson, whom Colt knew as a brewer at Rock Bottom. By 2009, the two seasoned corporate brewpub veterans wanted to go independent — and they didn’t want to mess with food. After cashing in their savings and 401Ks, with the help of some thirsty investors, they launched Sun King Brewery, the city’s first production brewery since Indianapolis Brewing Company kicked in 1948 (61 years ago — only recently reborn as a year-round release). They started pumping out kegs of their flagship Osiris Pale Ale and two malt-forward flavors that seemed geared toward the local palates cultivated by Hill: Bitter Druid ESB and Wee Mac Scottish Ale.
Sun King’s breakout star, however, was a bit of a surprise — at least to its creators. Their first summer seasonal was Sunlight Cream Ale, a crisp and refreshing hot-weather crusher that served as a true gateway for Indy’s craft curious. “It was not intended to be our flagship, but we don’t always get to decide,” says Colt. “It’s what people wanted. It sold out; we made another batch; it sold out.”
By the end of its first year, Sun King was all over the city and had spilled over into nearby college towns like Muncie, Lafayette, and even Upland’s territory in Bloomington. Bars were quickly demanding kegs, which Colt and Robinson were still delivering personally. They produced 5,000 barrels their first full year of operation, 10,000 the following year, as they started canning tallboys, and two years later, 20,000. Today, they’re the second-largest brewer in Indiana (tops is 3 Floyds), and they’ve opened a satellite location is Sarasota, Florida.
Exponential growth aside, Sun King hasn’t outgrown its hands-on, face-to-face approach. Robinson has moved to Sarasota to personally oversee that offshoot. Colt is still in Indiana, where he currently serves as president of the Indiana Brewers Guild. “The longer your tail gets, the more stuff gets lost,” he says. “There’s a diminishing return in full-on distribution. You don’t have much control over the product, with less and less control the further away the beer gets. If we have a model where you’re hyper-local and can take care of our neighborhood, you’re in a much better position.”
Call It Kismet
When Nicole Oesch, two beers in at Upland’s South Broad Ripple satellite, declared “Fuck it! We’re going to open a brewery!” her husband, Ryan, thought it was the alcohol talking. Then the permit applications from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau showed up in the mail.
Nicole forgives her husband for thinking Kismetic Brewing Company was a drunk idea. It was 2020, and even before pandemic shutdowns sent the beer industry (like all industries) into chaos, craft beer had already seen a dramatic slowing in growth and a retraction in volume. Forces were afoot that would shutter dozens of Indiana taprooms and breweries in the coming years, 15 in 2024 after 13 closures in 2023, including Indiana City Brewing, the brewery where Nicole cut her teeth in management and where she met and hired Ryan as a bartender.
Ryan was raised in Northeastern Indiana, but he was steeped in Central Indiana beer. His college landlord was head brewer at Upland, which was his introduction to local craft beer. He started homebrewing. He moved to Indy, where Broad Ripple Brewpub showed him community brewpub culture and more full-bodied, malt-forward ales that weened him off macro lagers. By the time Sun King came around, Ryan was a fanboy in waiting. “I followed them wherever they went,” he says. “I’d travel for a Sun King beer. They had these limited releases, firkin pours, things you felt lucky to get a snifter of.”
Meanwhile, Nicole was living in California, where her beer horizons were broadened by Sierra Nevada. When she returned to Indiana, she left her corporate career to start a food pop-up called Broke Chicks Chili that would set up at area breweries and serve chili and walking tacos. “I fell in love with taproom culture,” she says. She picked up parttime work at local breweries to supplement the pop-up, but beer soon became her fulltime occupation.
So, by the time of Nicole’s 2020 Declaration of Intent to Open a Brewery, both she and Ryan knew what they wanted to do — and what they didn’t want to do. They wanted to stay small in terms of production, Ryan sticking to a 3.5-barrel system that allowed him to experiment and be nimble in rotating styles and flavors, while also giving them more control over the quality of product. And they wanted to be an old-school community taproom, so they invested in the long-neglected formerly industrial Twin Aire neighborhood on the near east side of Indy, near where they lived, that was starting to show signs of life.
Most of all, Nicole wanted to emphasize the taproom. They wanted a place that was welcoming to women and people of color — groups that hadn’t necessarily felt welcomed in the Hoosier beer scene. “We wanted to be the brewery for everybody else,” says Nicole. “We thought that cocktail bars can feel nice and comfortable. If you can make a high-quality experience for cocktails, why not beer?”
Kismetic is the embodiment of that sentiment, with throwback retro-futuristic décor; low, leather lounge boots; a dominant centerpiece bar that wraps around, making it virtually impossible to avoid conversation with bartenders and fellow drinkers. Ryan has leaned into the cocktail theme with beers like a Martini Spruce Kolsch or an Amaro Saison that miraculously balances a light licorice taste with other subtle spices. For purists, his Schwarzbier and Italian and French pilsners are doggedly true to style. “We’re just making what we like,” says Ryan.
In other words, one of Indy’s newest breweries is embodying the ethos of its first brewery, opened by John Hill in 1990 because he wanted a place to drink cask ales and watch football on the tele.
“I don’t know if this approach will save craft beer,” says Nicole. “But we’re buying into the neighborhood pub atmosphere, that vibe. The type of beer and environment you have to go to the taproom to get.”
About the Author
Tony Rehagen is a freelance writer based in St. Louis. He has written about crime, sports, politics, healthcare, and Taco Bell, but his passion is writing about beer and beer culture. He is also a staunch proponent of the Willi Becher pint.
