Indiana beers

A Petite Chou eatery converts into a Cafe Patachou, and Revery opens in Greenwood.

In a market crowded with pedigreed brewers, a place founded by three law-school students and their friends with a little homebrewing experience sounds like a recipe for Imperial Disaster. (Not actually an esoteric beer name. Yet.) But the owners of Black Acre in Irvington have had their day in court, and we’re ruling in their favor.

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.

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.

When Kevin Matalucci opened Twenty Tap in SoBro a few years ago, the former Broad Ripple Brewpub brewer said he had no immediate plans to make his own beer there. We knew better.

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.

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.

With wisps of toasted coconut in both aroma and flavor, Scarlet Lane’s Dorian tastes surprisingly light for a stout. It’s actually better than Flat12’s popular version.

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.

The North End offers game-day carryout and Sangiovese Ristorante reveals its new location.

This time next month, you’ll once again be able to grab a beer and a bite from the Aristocrat Pub & Restaurant (5212 N. College Ave., 317-283-7388). According to manager Melissa Uhte, the 79-year-old neighborhood favorite will reopen its doors in the first or second week of October after a 13-month closure for reconstruction, the result of an electrical fire that destroyed the back of the building and left everything else saturated with smoke. 

The latest lunchtime addition to downtown is Punch Burger (137 E. Ohio St.), a casual burger-and-beer joint where diners can grab a quick bite for $5 to $6. Scheduled to open Oct. 1, the concept comes from Travis Sealls and Devon Everhart, owners of downtown’s fast-sandwich spot, Pita Pit (1 N. Pennsylvania St., 317-829-7482).