Making the Rounds at the Bloomington Craft Beer Festival

While this weekend’s Bloomington Craft Beer Festival is the younger sibling to downtown Indy’s summer shindig, the college-town version isn’t lacking in stature. Held inside Woolery Mill (a shuttered limestone facility), the festival hosts 53 Indiana brewers, a meadery, and a winery. And for the first time in several years, all of the pours hail from Indiana.

Expect a fair amount of sours and barrel-aged beers. The sours will continue to roll out through the summer, along with fresh approaches to IPAs. For example, Upland Brewing Company will be touting an India Pale Lager (which tastes a lot like an IPA but is fashioned after the lager style of brewing) that is a true B-town collaboration with The Tap Craft Beer Bar, Function Brewing, Quaff On, and Bloomington Brewing Company. Just for kicks, the hops were added to this batch via drone.

Keep an eye out for tea-blend beers and Mayan chocolate cayenne stout from Function. Upland is bringing back its dark and delicious Let’s Get Weird—a chocolaty Belgian golden ale blended with a milk stout and aged with black currant. It’s one of eight beers in the brewery’s Side Trail series coming out this year, a brewer side project that lets Upland beermasters off the leash to create wild new flavor combinations.

This weekend’s festival benefits the Brewers of Indiana Guild, which means ticket sales will help fund  projects down the road—including an Indiana Beer Trail, similar to the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky. Woolery Mill, 2200 W. Tapp Rd., Bloomington

When: Saturday, April 11, 2015

1 p.m. (Early Bird)

2 p.m. (General Admission)

Last pour at 5:30 p.m.