Mashcraft Celebrates The Glorious Stout With Weekend Bonanza

I love all styles of beer, my favorites being Stouts and IPAs. The former is a beer that I love year round, especially in the cooler months. For those who aren’t familiar with the noble Stout, it’s basically a dark ale developed in Britain and Ireland and is a direct descendent of the Porter. I like Stouts far more than Porters usually because they have stronger aromas and flavors. Like all styles of beer, Stouts can take on many shapes and forms and are often the go-to style when it comes to choosing a beer to age in (usually) whiskey barrels. The beer can stand up to the strong whiskey flavors and the resulting concoction is often delicious.

Again, every Stout (aged or not) is quite different so being able to try a bunch side by side would be a great experience. Lucky for me,MashCraft Brewing in Greenwood decided to host such an event this past Saturday. The event was to be called Mariana’s Stout Bonanza, and I was excited to have been in attendance. 

This was to be my first time at Mashcraft, but I wasn’t unfamiliar with the brewery or its head brewer Andrew Castner. Living in Noblesville I have frequented the Ram in Fishers and have always enjoyed their beers. Being that the Ram is a chain of breweries, their standard beers are brewed consistently from location to location. I was, however, always struck by how much I enjoyed their seasonal beers and was recently told that the head brewer (for the Fishers and Indianapolis locations) was given license to use his own recipes on the seasonal side. That brewer was Castner, and when I heard he was opening up his own place I was more than willing to make the trip south.

I showed up Saturday with an adventurous spirit and two good friends in tow. I immediately headed to the bar to have some of their IPA before the Stout onslaught began. This was the only beer of MashCraft’s I have had before and I was happy to be able to have it again from the source. After a few samples of non-Stouts, Castner welcomed everyone to Mashcraft and explained the rules. Basically, a lucky group of people were to blindly sample a bunch of Stouts in a back room, and then eliminate their least favorites round by round. After a beer was eliminated, one could then get a sample of that beer from four different stations set up around Mashcraft.