Winterfest 2016 the lesser known brewers and beers

Winterfest 2016 by the Brewers of Indiana Guild is a great place to try new beers. Winterfest was held this year on Saturday, January 29, at the Indiana State Fairgrounds from 2:00 (early bird) -6:45. With over 80 Indiana brewers plus many guest beers it took a strategy to decide what beer to try. Simple math says that if there were 84 Indiana breweries pouring at least 5 beers each (Bare Hands offered 40 brews) no one was going to sample over 400 beers!
We started with breweries we don’t know as well, those maybe farther away or newer.

One of the first beers we tasted was Blind Owl Brewery’s Belgian Dark Strong. They used traditional ingredients, La Chouffe yeast, and candy sugar in this one to provide a nice slightly sweet heavy beer. Blind Owl has not been open a year yet and is known for Hoo Brew Honey Brown and None the Wiser IPA, both of which they offered.

Schnitz Brewery’s Wayne Patmore offered us the Schnitz porter, with very nice deep roast flavor – a solid porter. Way …