INDIANAPOLIS — In 1979, a revolution began in America. President Jimmy Carter signed legislation to permit homebrewing.

The thought was that guys across the country would just brew up their own cheaper versions of Miller and Budweiser.

Something odd happened, though. Brewers began to uncover older recipes and cook up their own versions of bocks and ales from around the world, and from America’s own past.

Then, the revolution hit Indiana.

“In 1990, John Hill opened the first brewpub in Indiana, Broad Ripple Brewpub,” said Rita Kohn, senior writer for Nuvo Newsweekly and author of the new book “True Brew: A Guide to Craft Beer in Indiana.”

“Then Thomas Schmidt opened Mishawaka (Brewing Co.), and Greg Emig opened Lafayette Brewing Co. And it kind of stayed that way.”

Kohn’s book is a series of oral histories told by the brewers, discussing the inspirations and plans behind their labels. It is also a brief encyclopedic entry on what craft beer actually is.



A matter of chemistry

“For me, craft beer is a beverage that has great complexity,” said Kohn, who writes a column on beer for Nuvo. “It gives one an opportunity to savor all the senses.

“When you look at (beer), it’s not all pale yellow. You’ve got a range from straw-looking to almost black.”

Kohn noted that there were 30 or so categories of beer, with hundreds of subcategories. And each one is a delicate blend of culinary skill and artistry.

“There’s a great deal of chemistry that’s involved here,” she said. “Any good home cook knows if you mix certain herbs and spices together with other food products, you’re going to get totally different flavors. Beer, like bread, will provide any range.”

Before Prohibition, there were dozens of beers across the U.S. They were not pasteurized and had to be sold locally. In Anderson, beer meant Norton Brewing Co.

Through advertising and the national availability of certain brands, pale lager became the “standard” beer for Americans, one bland taste to satisfy all appetites.

With craft beer, Kohn says, it’s the other way around.

“We had ‘dumbed down’ our taste buds,” she added. “When people start drinking craft beers after drinking macrobrewed beer, they say, ‘We didn’t even know we could taste all these things.’”



Good ol’ Hoosier beer

For Indiana breweries, variety is the spice of life. Some bottle their beer; others don’t. Some offer food in a café; others simply operate a plant.

But all of them create a spectrum — pilsner, kolsch, bock, altbier, porter, stout — from two basic types of beer: ales and lagers. According to DrinkingBeer.net, ale is fermented at higher temperatures, lager at lower. Ale is brewed with a different kind of yeast than is lager.

“Craft brewing is like composing,” Kohn said. “Some people have just one note that they strum along, and other people are Beethoven. To me, craft beer is Beethoven.”

And to the composers she interviewed, she posed but one question: “What brought you to craft brewing?”

“And rarely got to talk the rest of the hour,” Kohn laughed.

The revolution is spreading, she adds. Recently, Kohn sat in a brewpub drinking a Bell’s Oberon, brewed in Michigan.

The man on the next stool, she could tell, was more familiar with mass-produced beers.

“He’d been watching me, because I was sipping the beer,” Kohn said. “By the time I’d gone through a third of my pint, he was on his third pint.”

She ordered a sample of a craft-brewed beer, a pale ale, the kind he was most familiar with. Then she began to ask him about the different flavors he tasted.

“All of a sudden, he said, ‘This is different,’” Kohn said. “And he turned to the person to his right and said, ‘You ought to taste this stuff! It’s like food!’

“These beers are not purchased because of advertising (like major beers). They’re purchased because people want quality in their lives.”



Contact Rodney Richey, 640-4861, rodney.richey@heraldbulletin.com.