It has been awhile since we did an update and a lot has been happening at the taproom and the brewery. This post is mostly about the taproom. If you are looking for our beers at a bar, restaurant or liquor store across Indiana we continue to post recent deliveries on our website. We primarily distribute our Lift Off IPA, Rip Cord DIPA, Muse Belgian Golden Ale & Vacation Kölsch with a few special small batch beers making their way out to nice homes from time to time. 

Taproom Hours have been extended

We recently extended the hours the Taproom is open and are open an hour later on most days

Tuesday to Thursday: 3 to 10 pm

Friday to Saturday: 11 am to 11 pm

Sunday: 11 am to 8 pm

Recently Released and Upcoming Beers

We post our current taplist on our website and we also recently started using Untappd for Business so you can subscribe to our taproom page and get alerts on new beers and events in their app on your phone.  At any given time we try to have on around 15 beers including our core year around beers and a wide selection of other beers. Recently added beers include:

Oktoberfest (on draft now)

English Harvest Ale (on draft now)

Carnival Saison (on draft now)

NEX IPA (on draft now)

Brett Project IPA (on draft now)

Dunkels Bock (coming soon)

Nitro J.W.P. American Stout (coming soon)

Save the Date: 4th Anniversary Celebration Saturday, December 17th

On Saturday, December 17th we will be hosting the kick-off to our 4th Anniversary celebration at our taproom. There will be crazy specials ($1 Lift Off IPA & Vacation Kolsch pints) and some special beers. More on specials as we get closer.

We will also host several events in January with more information on those coming in a few weeks. If you want to also save the date for our annual anniversary beer dinner at Black Market it will be on Monday, January 30th. 

More background on our new NEX IPA 

New & Experimental (aka NEX) IPA is our new American IPA that showcases our love of aggressively hopped beers. For this batch, we used a large amount of fresh Citra hop cones with a blend of Amarillo, Centennial, Citra, Chinook and Simcoe hop pellets throughout the brewing process. ABV: 7.0% IBUs: 80.

We had a lot of fun making this beer and we hope people enjoy it. This IPA will primarily be available from our taproom on draft and for carry out. We hope to make other versions of this beer and are looking into providing cans in the future, so stay tuned. This represents the third IPA in our lineup joining Lift Off & Rip Cord with all three being different examples of hop-forward IPAs.

For this batch we aimed to have this beer be toward the New England Style. We know a lot of people are going to ask the question what exactly is a New England Style IPA. There is no singular answer. However, there are some common qualities in IPAs coming from this region of the country that we enjoy which was part of the inspiration.

Generally these IPAs are hop-forward without being overly bitter and they have a softer mouth feel than many American IPAs. Example of IPAs from the northeast that we enjoy and that provided some inspiration for us when we were creating NEX would be Focal Banger and Heady Topper from The Alchemist as well as Haze & Sap from Tree House. In making NEX we did not set out to clone another beer. The intent was to present a different twist on flavor and aroma profiles we enjoy from the hop forward beers that we already brew. Having access to freshly harvested Citra hop cones from our friends at YCH Hops in Yakima, WA was just the excuse we needed to kick off this experiment. 

The main point with any beer is just to enjoy it for what it is. We hope you can visit us to enjoy the next beer in our Taproom lineup, NEX IPA.

We are pretty stoked to announce we are doing our first ever collaboration beer and that the beer will be our version of Arrogant Bastard.

For those that are not familiar with Arrogant Bastard, it is one of the all time great hoppy beers created by Greg Koch and Steve Wagner at Stone Brewing Company in Escondido, California. We can’t say enough about being entrusted to brew this recipe and bring some Arrogant Bastard Ale to our taproom. We plan to brew our Adopted Arrogant Bastard on Tuesday, May 24th and we invite everyone to come in to smell the Liquid Arrogance during brew day from the taproom. Look for a planned on tap date about June 24th.  

Also, we will be donating proceeds from this collaboration to one of our favorite local charities, Speedway Trails, which is a local non-profit with volunteers that maintain and help raise funds to build new trails.  

Aggressively Fun!

Michael, Bill and Shane

New Beers. First up, we have a slew of new beers coming at the taproom in May. To celebrate the greatest spectacle in racing we have a new limited beer that we will release for the first time this May. This special new beer is Race Day American Craft Lager. The inspiration for this beer comes from our lager series and we also wanted to brew a beer for race fans that is enjoyable from start to finish of a typical 500 mile race day. One fun part of making this beer was that we were able to use freshly ground masa which we sourced from our friends at The Tamale Place in the recipe. Our Race Day lager will be available on draft at the taproom and we will have a limited number of Crowlers (32 oz cans) complete with the official Race Day label available for Race Weekend. It may make some guest taps around Indy too so stay tuned. Look for this to tap around May 13th. 

Next up for new taproom beers in May

* Maibock (which literally means “May Bock”) is a new lager release that should tap around May 6th. This traditional German-style beer is a lighter style bock beer that celebrates the return of summer.  

* Slip Stream American Pale Ale will return on draft in mid-May. 

* Dunkel is another new lager release that will tap around May 27th. This dark lager style is a malty and refreshing beer. 

* Whimsy is a new Summer Saison that we will release for the first time in mid-May. Look for more information it the coming weeks as it will be a very refreshing summer beer to enjoy on the patio. 

* And look for the Nitro taps we recently introduced to get tap’d on a regular basis (usually on Fridays) with a rotation of beers including Nitro versions of Pils, Rip Cord, Lift Off & J.W.P. and maybe some other new things that we do just for fun. 

Kitchen update. If you have not been in to the taproom in a few weeks or months you may have missed we expanded the foods we offer in addition to continuing to support our guests bringing in food or ordering delivery from the many local restaurants near us. Our kitchen menu now has a daily soup option and a cheese & meat board on weekdays and on the weekend we add a sandwich special. We are working with great local partners to put together options that pair well with our beers as well are just darn tasty. Nuvo had a really nice write up on our taproom food options a couple weeks ago.We are very excited to be working with great local partners like Smoking Goose, Tulip Tree Creamery, Amelia’s Bread and Piazza Produce.

Taproom events. Bands at the Brewery, our regular live music series starts back up for the summer season on Saturday, April 30th with a fan favorite, Southern Reserve, which brings a mix of country, country rock and classic rock. The live music takes place on our outdoor stage and we have a really fun lineup for the month of May.

Race Day (aka the 100th Indy 500) Sunday, May 29th. Our taproom will open at 7 am for all the people arriving early or staying in the area who are looking to come out before heading to the track. We also will be airing the radio feed during the race and then be open to 8 pm if you want to have a place to hang out after the race.

Some things to know

* Yes, you can do carry out from our brewery on race day.

* We also will have extra outside beer stations in addition to being able to come inside to grab a beer at the taproom.

* Uber/Taxis: The official drop off for race day is on the corner in front of our brewery at Gilman & Main Street

* Bike to the 500: New this year you can do a group bike ride out to the 500. We are providing parking on our the south side of our lot and very excited to work with IndyCOG, the 500 Festival and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on making this happen. You have to register to participate so do that today.

* We will have B’s Po Boy & King David Dogs at our place providing some great food options. B’s is even making beignets that morning. 

And if you missed that we expanded our hours at the taproom a couple months back we keep all that information at daredevilbeer.com/taproom. Tuesday to Thursday is 3-9pm, Friday/Saturday is 11 am to 10 pm and Sunday is 11 am to 8 pm. 

As always Aggressively Fun!

For the past three years we have been fortunate to partner with Brackets for Good, which is an Indianapolis based charitable organization. Every March they host online, bracket-style fundraising tournaments in philanthropic communities where participating nonprofit organizations compete for free to out fundraise their opponents, earn increased exposure, and have a chance to win $10,000 from a generous corporate sponsor. 

We first got involved as the craft beer sponsor by just donating some beer for the staff who at the time was running one competition in Indianapolis. Getting involved with Brackets for Good became a way for Daredevil to have a much larger impact with our philanthropy as by working with BFG we were able to immediately help 64 local Indianapolis charities. We were hooked.

Then in 2015 BFG did two cities with Indianapolis and Louisville, so now we were able to help benefit 128 charities. Fast forward to 2016 and BFG is going to run fundraising tournaments this March in 5 cities, which means we can help 320 charities across Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis, Ann Arbor and Minneapolis. Wow. 

This year we worked with BFG to do a commemorative version of our flagship Lift Off IPA can to help increase awareness of the annual charitable tournaments they run and they will start hitting our distribution areas across Indiana by mid-February as well as show up at their kick-off events in the participating cities where BFG is able to bring in our beers. So, look for this special can and remember to get involved with Brackets for Good by visiting their website at http://www.bfg.org to help make a difference with Fundraising Madness!