Indiana Beer News – March 15

So this weekend brings us some basketball tournament thing and the always popular St. Patrick’s Day. Flat 12 and the Elbow Room have your back with festivities including a special Flat 12 Irish Amber (?), food, and parade viewing. Upland taps their Ard Ri Imperial Red tonight at the Indy Tasting Room. And of course we can count on the Claddagh to kick tonight off with a traditional….Claddagh's Got Talent?…..OK, well Saturday might be a little more promising if you enjoy Kegs and Eggs and U2 covers. JK O’Donnell’s has a nice looking St. Patrick’s celebration in Fort Wayne.

Our founder Bob Ostrander will be one of the highlights of the Indiana German Heritage Society’s annual symposium at the Athenaeum in Indianapolis. Bob will give a presentation on German Breweries in Indiana’s History at 1:15pm on Saturday, March 24th. A full schedule and registration form can be found here.

We’re still looking for BJCP-certified judges for the National Homebrew Competition first round at Sun King in Indianapolis April 13th – 15th. Please register at http://tinyurl.com/nhcindy2012 if you can help us out. I promise this will be the last time I bug you about this……maybe.

Andy from The Beer Is Good! blog gives us a recap of the recent Flat 12 tap night at the Fiddler’s Hearth in South Bend. Better try the Bleeding Heart if you get a chance!

If you made the trip up to Founders for the KBS Release Party, I sincerely hope you weren’t one of the last 362 people in line. The good news is their new 85 bbl brewhouse will enable next year’s release to be about three times larger.

Goose Island has plans to quadruple their barrel program and has acquired an auto body shop that will be used to expand their development of high-end sour beers.

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Nike has managed to sully the holiday with their Nike SB Dunk Low aka Nike Black and Tans. No word yet on the curbing of other St. Patrick’s Day abominations==>

It’s going to be an interesting year for Samuel Adams with releases ranging from an interpretation of the rare Gose (goes-uh) style from Saxony to jumping on the Shandy bandwagon with Samuel Adams Porch Rocker. The latter will join Shock Top Lemon Shandy (from Anheuser-Busch), Labatt Shandy, Harp Lemon Shandy, and Saranac Shandy Lager and Lemonade to challenge top dog Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy for your thirst-quenching beermonade dollar. But SA can claim theirs is a “traditional Bavarian-style Radler” – 30,000 bonus Beer Geek points if you have any idea what that means.

And to spare you further sarcasm on the subject of Shandies in this column, I’ll redirect you to some choice comments from Roger Baylor here.

Carla at Hoperatives (Cincinnati bloggers) tipped us off on a self-frothing beer mug from Japan that can save you from the horrors of flat beer. A handy switch (available in yellow and black) lets you generate the desired level of froth “so you can really take your beverages seriously”. Now put down your snifter and get with the times!

Well, that’s enough for now, I’d like to shirk my blogging responsibilities to drink beer and watch basketball. Enjoy your weekend!

Cheers, Nathan