09 Aug Rock Bottom’s Best Kept Secret: Independent Brewing
By Mathew Muncy
When you get asked about where you would like to go drink, a chain brewpub is not likely one of your first thoughts. Here in Indiana, we have plenty of “independent” brewery choices, so places like Granite City, RAM, or Rock Bottom don’t typically make the list.
“A lot of people think about Rock Bottom like ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to Rock Bottom. I’d rather go to Deviate [Brewing] or something like that,’” said Jason Cook. “I understand because that’s how I was too. When I was in Chicago, I wanted to go to 3 Floyds instead.”
Cook is the brewmaster for Rock Bottom’s Indianapolis College Park location. While tasting the beers he had on tap, he let me in on a not-so-known fact about Rock Bottom: every beer is brewed locally and each recipe is crafted by the brewmaster, not corporate.
“The original [brewing] concept was that way for about 20 years,” explained Nathan Scruggs, Brewmaster for the Rock Bottom Downtown Indy location. “Then, back in 2010, I wanna say, Craftworks bought them out and they had this idea of standardizing house beers.”
From the onset, Rock Bottom allowed each brewer to create brews that their patrons would thoroughly enjoy. Here in Indiana, beer drinkers at both Rock Bottom locations trend towards the IPA and wheat beers, while in other states it might be a Red Ale or Porter.
Scruggs, who has been with Rock Bottom for a little over two years now, was very happy when they brought back the original concept.
“It was great,” said Scruggs. “To me, it was great because no brewer, I feel like, wants to brew someone else’s beer. So, when they came to the consensus to bring back the local concept I loved it.”
However, during the four “corporate” years, the beer landscape in Indiana changed immensely, and Rock Bottom found themselves fighting an uphill battle to regain that “locally brewed” image.
“It just so happens that in [Indiana] in the past four or fives years, craft beer has really blown up,” Scruggs told me. “So a lot of the craft beer drinkers only remember that part of Rock Bottom and don’t recall how it was the original concept for two decades, and just went back to that.”
Roughly a year into the change, and it’s still not universally known that each Rock Bottom serves unique beers. You could blame a lack of marketing from headquarters as the number one factor in why this is still a problem. When visiting the Rock Bottom website, the beer section doesn’t seem to have been updated since the concept changed back, and they give little credence to their unique brewing habits.
Words like “local” are thrown around throughout the site, but most breweries say that even if the beers are not brewed on-site. The closest thing you can find to a statement about Rock Bottom’s unique brewing habits is “Every tank we tap represents hours of planning, experimentation, ingenuity and precision by your local Rock Bottom Brewmaster.” Yet, reading that lone sentence doesn’t, in fact, tell anyone that the br
ewmaster is creating each brew from scratch or, say, the IPA is different in each location.
To keep his customers as informed as possible on what he’s got brewing, Scruggs started an Instagram account (@RBIndy). He posts each time he taps a new beer, giving his followers a detailed look into what new recipe he’s brewed.
Rock Bottom’s downtown Indy location celebrated its 20th Anniversary back in June. They are the oldest microbrewery in Downtown and they are the fourth oldest in the state. Cook grew up in Fishers, Indiana, and remembers when Rock Bottom, Broad Ripple Brew Pub, and Barley Island were the main brewpubs brewing unique beer in the area.
During the Rock Bottom “corporate” year’s, Cook was an assistant brewer in the Chicago-area for the company. He moved back home last year to take over as Brewmaster. And while headquarters requires each location to have five beer styles on tap at all times—IPA, a rotating wheat, a Red Ale, a Kolsch, and a rotating dark beer—they are all still unique to each brewer.
As corporate has taken a step back, their brewers have taken a step forward. Cook took home three medals at the 2016 Indiana Brewers Cup: a bronze for Kimbo (Dark Lager) and silver for Poppin’ My Collar (Strong Stout) and Mr. Rager (IPA).
And not only have their brewers created award winning beers while they’ve had free reign over the brewing process, but it’s catapulted many to open their own breweries.
“It’s cool to see what brewers have come from Rock Bottom,” Cook explained while discussing Rock Bottom being a launchpad for many craft beer brewers. “3 Floyds’ guys came from Rock Bottom, Sun King’s Clay [Robinson] worked at the Downtown location, and the Surly [Brewing] guys came from Rock Bottom. People hate on the chain, but a lot of great brewers come from Rock Bottom.”
Rock Bottom has the award winning beer, experienced craft beer brewers, and with more public awareness, the corporate brewpub reputation will fade.
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