Oaken Barrel Brewing Co.

What happens when your brewery grows faster than planned, when you take a giant step from running a 7-barrel pub system to running a 50-barrel microbrewery?

Although the owners of the Oaken Barrel Brewing Co., in the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood, eventually hoped to expand, it wasn't something they had in their short-range plans. But when the Indianapolis Brewing Co. went on the block last year, Oaken Barrel owners Bill Fulton, Brook Belli and Kwang Casey decided buying it was an opportunity they couldn't pass up.

Besides, the pub's brewing system was practically maxxed out, and storage space was at a premium, so they knew Oaken Barrel would have to expand, eventually. They raised money privately, and became the owners of IBC's brewing equipment and bottling line late last year, taking possession of the warehouse space where those are located on Jan. 1.

With the demise of the Evansville Brewing Co., Oaken Barrel is now Indiana's largest brewery. The new purchase added 9,000 square feet of space to the 650-square-foot pub brewery and expanded capacity from 2,000 to 10,000 barrels.

Rather than dive right into the new equipment, Belli, the director of brewing operations, decided to test the brewing water. "We're not afraid to take our time. We're spending a day a week there," he said this summer. "Until we're able to be there two to three days a week, it's hard to get used to everything. You go in and it's like, 'Where'd I leave off?'

"We need to make a lot of money before we can make a lot of changes there. We don't want to overextend ourselves." Still, he added, "I'm looking forward to the time when we can make that the focus more than the pub."

Buying Indianapolis Brewing isn't the first time Oaken Barrel has taken a step sooner than planned, and the owners have approached each new step with the same kind of caution. Not long after opening in July 1994, the brewpub became a distributing microbrewery, thanks to the popularity of a beer called Razz Wheat.

Although Belli never made a raspberry beer as a homebrewer, he did so at the request of Fulton's wife, Patty, who had tried several in the Northwest. "I think it was the only fruit beer in the state," Belli said. "We didn't plan to sell it off premise, but more people came in and tried it. It was the one beer they focused on, like nothing they ever had before."

Within two months of the pub's opening, bar owners were coming in, wanting to buy it. "We didn't try to solicit accounts," Belli said. "They came to us and said that's what they wanted."

Added Fulton, "We tried to take it off tap, and we couldn't." Off premise, they found, "it wasn't the sales that were important, it was the fact that it was a drawing card. Bud Ice isn't going to draw somebody into their place, but Razz Wheat will."

Boosted by that initial success, and by winning a silver medal for Razz Wheat at the 1995 Great American Beer Festival, Oaken Barrel targeted likely accounts. "The places we picked were horrible," Belli said, with a laugh. "So, we pulled back and let them come to us." Today, the beer and several other Oaken Barrel brews are sold off-premise through Hoosier Micro Distributors.

Three brewers run Oaken Barrel's brewery -- Belli, brewing coordinator Jerry Sutherland and brewer Tony Diggs. They do two 7-barrel brews on brew day and transfer them into a 14-barrel tank. Belli says he and brewer Gus Chalfant, who died last year, "rebuilt the whole thing" over the past few years. By adding five 14-barrel conditioning tanks, the brewery doubled its capacity relatively cheaply.

In addition to Razz Wheat, the most popular beers at Oaken Barrel are Meridian Street Premium Lager and Snake Pit Porter. Meridian Lager is a medium-bodied, straw-colored lager in the helles style. It's hopped with American hops, including Cascades, which Belli describes as his "workhorse bittering hops," with Liberty and Crystal added late in the boil. Meridian Lager took a silver in the Munchener Helles and Export category at last year's GABF.

The experience they gained from winning medals at the GABF illustrates the changing attitudes micros are facing when trying to market their beer. The silver won for Razz Wheat produced a "little spike" of interest, Belli said. "We got a lot of media exposure, it was in the newspapers, TV came out, we hit the radio with ads. Last year, when we won, it was, like, old news."

Still, he added that he thinks the medals give his work some legitimacy. "It helps people understand we're not just making beer out in the shed."

Snake Pit Porter is a coffeeish porter made with chocolate, crystal and black malt. Other popular beers include Leroy Brown, an English-style brown ale made with honey, and Big Red, a red ale. Despite the fact that Razz Wheat, Snake Pit Porter and Meridian Lager account for two-thirds of the pub brewery's output, Oaken Barrel has been able to make about 15 beers each year. "Brook likes to keep eight beers on tap," Fulton said. Popular seasonals include Plum Stout, which is available in the winter, and a German-style unfiltered wheat beer called King Rudi, sold during the summer.

Eventually, the eastside brewery will take over production of the porter, lager and Razz, hopefully freeing up the pub system somewhat. The IBC equipment includes a 25-barrel brew kettle, two 50-barrel fermenters and five 50-barrel conditioning tanks and a bright tank.

But it will take months to get it on track. For one thing, Belli is concerned about how the lager will translate to the bigger system. "The lager's always been tricky, with yeast management," he said. "I'm hoping to get a new mill installed before we lager over there. The water's a little different, the mill's a little different." The fact that Diggs formerly worked at Indianapolis Brewing will help. "It's nice to have him familiar with all the equipment," Belli said.

"A restaurant is a built-in market for your beer."

Even when the eastside brewery is fully operational, Oaken Barrel doesn't plan to sell much beer outside central Indiana. The brewpub produced more than 1,000 barrels in 1997, and has at times been on a 1,300-to- 1,500-barrel pace this year. "May was tough for us with the (Indianapolis 500) and the Pacers in the semis," Belli said. "We were out of lager, brown, red; we were down to four beers at one point."

Fulton, who's from Indiana, and Belli were working as engineers in Atlanta when they began talking about opening a brewery-restaurant. At that time, the early 1990s, brewpubs weren't legal in Georgia. "Microbreweries were legal, but starting a micro was a struggle," Belli said. "A restaurant is a built-in market for your beer."

Neither man had restaurant experience, but through a friend they found Casey, a restaurant veteran who was looking for a new opportunity. They contributed their own money and raised additional money privately. Casey serves as director of restaurant operations for the brewery, while Fulton is director of business operations.

Oaken Barrel had expanded twice before buying Indianapolis Brewing, first opening a beer garden in 1995, then adding the Brewhouse Bar to its original bar area in 1997. Late in 1996, the brewery bought a Meheen bottling line from Kalamazoo Brewing Co. Razz Wheat, Meridian Street Lager and Snake Pit Porter are now available in 12-ounce bottles, and the pub's pale ale may be in bottles by the time you read this. The brewers bottle about 50 cases at a time, so they can control product freshness.

As with draft accounts, Oaken Barrel has taken a conservative approach toward selling bottles. The bottled beer was only available at the pub until the beginning of this year, and it's still only available in a handful of liquor stores. And there are no immediate plans to go much further, since it may be a long time before the eastside brewery is functioning as a bottling micro. "Until we get the beers there like they are here, we'll bottle here," Belli said.

The Indy micro market still has plenty of room for growth, and Oaken Barrel's owners plan to grow slowly right along with it.

This story orginally appeared in Brew Your Own magazine in September 1998.