29 Jan Louisville’s Nationally Known Tailspin Ale Fest Takes Off On February 17th
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
With a name like Indiana On Tap, it’s fairly obvious that most of the articles and news are going to focus on Indiana craft beer and Indiana brewery news. But regardless of state lines on a map, Indiana craft beer has rather fuzzy borders when it comes to surrounding states. Many breweries are starting to distribute to states with common borders, and beer tourism is now a real thing.
Indiana folks that live in New Albany or Jeffersonville think nothing of traveling across the bridge (use the one without the toll), and people in Hammond or Muncie will just as likely travel to Lansing or the Chicago outskirts to drink as work their way down to Crown Point or Valpo. Perhaps the biggest overlap between Indiana and another state is along the Michigan border. There are countless excellent breweries in southwestern portion of Michigan, and the Michigan folks are just as likely to travel down to Bare Hands, Burn ‘Em, Shoreline, or Goshen.
Tailspin Ale Fest has built itself into one of the premier festivals in the US in just a few short years. Not my opinion, USA Today’s. image credit: Tony Bennett Photography & Tailspin Ale Fest
As part of this trading of good craft beer, festivals along the border cities (Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, Chicago, etc.) are good at including breweries from both sides of the border. One example of this is coming up soon, the Tailspin Ale Fest in Louisville. Named one of the top ten beer festivals in the country by USA Today, the 5th annual version of Tailspin will be held on February 17th at the Bowman Airfield from 3pm – 7pm (2pm start for VIP).
The history of the festival is murky, devised over several beers at a bar a few years back, but the results have been nothing short of astounding. Trevor Cravens of DRAFT Magazine and All About Beer and Tisha Gainey, formerly of World Class Beverages, an Indiana craft beer distributor, knew Louisville was ready for a Winter Warmer beer festival, but starting a festival isn’t easy. Originally there was the issue of where to hold such a festival, but the Louisville Executive Hangar at the Bowman Field Airport in between I64 and I264 turned out to be an excellent locale, only four miles from downtown. It reminds me a bit of the great space that Crown Beer Fest has at the fairgrounds, more than enough room to move around, but not so much that you have to hike between tastes.
More than 75 breweries will be represented at Tailspin, each pouring multiple beers. Indiana will be well represented, with Upland, Daredevil, Sun King, Central State, New Day, and Tin Man and others pouring. Tin Man, acquired by Neace Ventures in 2017, is now a family partner of Falls City Beer, with both members making an appearance at the festival.
People in Indiana have good reason to travel down to Louisville for this festival. Outside of Against the Grain and the occasional keg that escapes the state from West Sixth or Country Boy, almost all the festival’s beer from Kentucky can only be sampled in Kentucky. If you haven’t traveled down there for beer before, you’ve really been missing something. The entire state has good beer, but who has time to travel all of Kentucky to find White Squirrel Brewing in Bowling Green or Paducah Beer Werks (well, other than Walter and I)?
Tailspin is a heck of a festival; I can’t see one person without a smile. Photo credit: Tony Bennett Photography & Tailspin Ale Fest
At Tailspin, you will have an opportunity to try a state’s worth of beer (and there are a lot of new breweries opening in Kentucky) all in one place. Ethereal and Blue Stallion in Lexington, Apocalypse, Monnik, Great Flood, and Akasha from Louisville, Braxton from Covington, and Wooden Cask from Newport – all will be pouring at Tailspin. This kind of variety is good for the people of Louisville too, as many of these breweries don’t distribute within the state either.
Yet there’s more, Cincinnati and other Ohio cities will be represented as well, beer that are also not available in Indiana – places like Great Lakes from Cleveland, Nowhere in Particular from all around, and Mt. Carmel and Christian Moerlein from Cincinnati. Add in the national breweries we see less of (Blackberry Farm, Terrapin and others) and this is a heck of a line up.
In total, there will be more than 250 beers available for tasting, and that takes a lot of space. It’s such a great idea to have a February beer festival in a vintage WWII airplane hangar. It’s open, it spacious, they have historic planes to look at while you sample. Co-creators Tisha Gainey and Trevor Cravens have seen to all the details and are constantly looking to improve the festival each year.
For 2018, an additional 30,000 sq. feet of space has been acquired, so look for more personal space and amenities. Previous visitors had called for additional bathroom facilities, and this was accommodated well in 2017 with a converted shipping container called “The Urination Station” – look for additional improvements for 2018. Other features, like the Kentucky Heritage brewery section and the Bourbon Barrel Beer Bar (sponsored by Liquor Barn) have been expanded for this year.
The vintage airplanes are great, and there will be pin up girls too. This is a photo op I might just take advantage of. photo credit: LouisvillePhotographer.com
Everything you might want from a festival is here, music from a DJ and from the dance band 100% Poly out of New Albany. There will be food trucks galore, helping attendees enjoy their time and bulk up for more beer. There will even be an official beer for the festival, a winning homebrew recipe for a marshmallow dunkelweizen brewed at Apocalypse in Louisville. Most important, the charity partner is the Dare to Care Food Bank. In the previous four years of the festival, Dare to Care has benefitted to the tune of over $40,000, and sales of this year’s tickets indicates that the total will increase substantially.
One of the more innovative aspects of the festival will be how people get there. Ample onsite parking is available, but the organizers have also instituted a shuttle program to help out. Leaving from six different points across Louisville and Indiana, and extra $10 will get you car to door to car service (shuttles can be picked up at the Liquor Barns in Middletown, Springhurst and Hurstbourne Lane, from the Mellow Mushroom at Highlands and St. Matthews locations, and even from the New Albanian Bank Street Café). To make before and after the festival even easier, discounted hotel rooms are available through Hawthorne Suites with a hotel shuttle directly to the festival.
Convinced? Of course you are, but you better get your tickets soon. Last year’s Tailspin Ale Fest sold out and it will again this year. Click here for admission and shuttle prices. Walter and I are looking forward to our first visit to this festival; I can’t imagine how we have neglected it to this point. Jut writing the preview for you is getting me amped up. Take the day to travel south and strengthen the bond between Indiana and Kentucky craft beer.
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