drinks

With ales and stouts as artfully crafted as their literary inspirations (the name is a nod to the Gone with the Wind protagonist, and the owners are avid readers), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of Scarlet Lane’s proprietors tells a great story about how craft beer knocked her head-over-heels.

If you’re new to the genre, Belgians can take some getting used to. For one thing, almost all of Taxman Brewing’s beers weigh in at 7 percent ABV or more.

Although it opened in 2009, Big Woods didn’t add Quaff On Brewing Company for bottling and restaurant distribution until 2012. And that’s when both the beers and the business took off.

In the process of paying homage to his forebears of froth, Ray Kamstra created one of the handsomest taprooms in town, marking every box on the industrial-chic checklist.

Tow Yard opened in April, relying heavily on local guest taps for the first few months, which allowed head brewer Bradley Zimmerman to slowly roll out a short list of hoppy, unfiltered “Pacific Northwest–style” craft beers.

For all of his success as the owner of Brugge Brasserie (famous for its Belgian-style ales), Ted Miller was too savvy a businessman to witness the American-style craft-beer boom here without thinking, “Why not me?” Outliers, on a once-forgotten block off of Mass Ave, is his answer.

Loyal customers don’t seem to mind making the effort to seek out this “hard-working beer” at its source.

Since opening in 2012, Union Brewing has featured cask-conditioned ales—one of only about a dozen outfits in the U.S. devoted to a method popularized by the Brits.

See the roster of five bars that have the greatest number of taps, and which one boasts 100-percent-local brews on draft.

Central Indiana’s first craft-beer wave broke a couple of decades ago. Though several of those breweries didn’t survive to witness today’s larger flood of openings, their brewers—and their stuff, and their legacies—are still floating around.

Indiana’s 63 breweries in 2013 ranked us a modest 20th nationwide for a total number, and we were a middling 14th for our craft breweries per capita—not bad, but not as dominant as we might think.

As consulting chef, Carlos Salazar assembled a menu of modified Southern dishes that are surprisingly complex for the bar-centric format.

Only one state prohibits the retail sale of packaged alcoholic beverages on Sunday while also allowing it to be served at bars, restaurants, and events. Spoiler alert: It’s us.

1. Connor’s Pub
6331 Ferguson St., 317-255-5039
The clientele at this Irish dive bar in Broad Ripple ranges from hippies to post-match hurling teams. (Hurling is the national sport of Ireland, you kn

Three simple ingredients—vodka, ginger beer, and lime juice—go into the Moscow Mule, yet every bar makes this trendy cocktail its own. Our stubborn Mule aficionados found the best.