Road Trip to Taxman Brewing

Taxman Brewing burst onto the craft-beer scene as a purveyor of Belgian-style ales, and now, two years later, the beards behind the beer have grown their south-south-suburban outpost in sleepy Bargersville into a farm-to-table gastropub worth the drive.

“We knew our location made us a destination—there’s nowhere around us where you can pick up a sandwich, and there aren’t food trucks,” says co-owner Leah Huelsebusch, who most definitely does not have a beard but does embrace the slow-food life that she and husband Nathan absorbed when they spent three years living in Belgium, where he worked as a tax consultant for Deloitte. “We’d go to places in France and Italy, and eat cheese at a table under the picture of the goat who gave the milk for the cheese,” says Leah, now a board member for Slow Food Indy. “I loved that concept and have become super passionate about it.”

True to their style, and in many cases properly boozy, the food-friendly pours are best enjoyed with Taxman’s nosh-worthy associates, informed by Leah’s attention to relationships with local farmers, makers, and vendors. Lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch menus name-check those sources, like Miller Amish chicken paired with a sweet-potato waffle. And, of course, there are cones of crispy-on-the-outside, feathery-on-the-inside frites.

But Taxman hasn’t forgotten about the beer. Last year, canned versions of brewery stalwarts like La Maison, a farmhouse ale, landed in Central Indiana liquor stores, and production is on track to double to 4,000 barrels this year. Expansion plans include adding more sours and barrel-aged offerings, a task that will fall to new head brewer David Yancey—a Great American Beer Festival medalist from Austin, Texas. “It’s cool that we’ve gotten to the point where we can bring someone of his experience to Bargersville,” says Nathan. “People used to ask, ‘Why Bargersville?’ That’s not really a question anymore.”

13 S. Baldwin St., Bargersville, 775-5706