Big Lug Canteen’s First Anniversary Party Proves to be a Marketing Manager’s Dream

18 Oct Big Lug Canteen’s First Anniversary Party Proves to be a Marketing Manager’s Dream

By Andrew Ogborn

Big Lug Canteen celebrated its first anniversary last week with a party that boasted a rocking band, intense food and (in true brewery fashion) special releases. In the opinion of local marketing professional and avid Notre Dame fan Caitlin Dempsey, the event was “a highly enjoyable celebration of an exciting achievement for Big Lug”.

Doesn’t that sound just like something a marketing manager would say?

Let’s start with the food. For those of you who’ve eaten here as many times as I have, you know the food comes in large portions. And I do mean large. I went on a first date here once and neither she nor I could finish our food; it made me look like a pansy. (***Side note, this is an excellent first date place.) The food specials were based off of (mostly) the hog that had been cooking for several hours. Now I know sometimes when people do a hog roast, the meat can go dry. This was not the case. I got the 2/3 pound of juicy pulled pork with tons of other fixins on the side. Rockstone Pizzeria and Pub — the pizza place next door — provided me with some BBQ sauce…because I love BBQ sauce.

Now, let’s talk turkey. By turkey, I mean beer. As you can see from the one and only non-blurry photo I took from the night, there were several beers being released. If you got there between 5 and 6 p.m. (which I didn’t because I suck), you were there for the Sour Hour. A word of advice for freshman college kids: This is not an hour of chugging sours. That can and likely will give you an ulcer. This was an hour where they released several of the sours they’ve been working on this last year.

Of all the beers I tried during the night, my two favorites were the 100 Billion Dollars (a sour aged in Backbone barrels for just under a year) and the Drunktoberfest. The Drunktoberfest was my “wow” beer for the night — that beer that stood out among the rest that I would go out of my way to get again. At 6% ABV and 25 IBU, it had a touch of bitterness in the “front” of the drink but sweet goodness the rest of the way. I had originally asked for a pint, but decided to try doing the whole flight of special releases (see photo). The follow-up pint was a good call.

Big Lug, keep up the good work. I have literally zero negative feedback about what you guys are doing, which is rare for me. Being right on the Monon Trail makes access easy, the venue is nice, the beer is very good, I like that you have TVs for watching games, the patio is fun and having a full bar is always nice for when your date says “I don’t really like” beer (which, side note, leads to no second date.)

Also, Caitlin from marketing LOVES the fact that Big Lug provides water to runners on the Monon.

Prost.