Saint John Malt Brothers A welcome Addition To Growing Northern Indiana Brewing Community

Returning with his wife to northwest Indiana in 2009, Dan Cox quickly realized that something was missing in his community. Having lived in Chicago for many years, Cox was passionately into the city’s growing craft beer industry, regularly enjoying breweries such as Goose Island. With a vision to re-create his Chicago experience, Cox found his neighbors, all of them homebrewers, also ready to take the next step in brewing. The result of that collaboration, Saint John Malt Brothers (Saint John, IN), became a reality this past March.

Cox, who is an engineer by trade and serves as SJMB’s Vice President, joined by President Jim Estry and Head Brewer Dave Witt, set up shop along Northwest Indiana’s busy State Route 41. The original plan was to have a small tasting room in the front of the brewing section, but when the opportunity presented itself, the brewery took up the challenge of creating a brewpub out of a former hair salon, which they also decided to lease. The brewpub’s layout uses the limited space well, with a variety of seating options, and the walls feature SJMB products and merchandise, along with paintings from local artists. The brewery itself features a fifteen barrel computerized European brewing system, and tours of the area are available to patrons.

The brewery has also enjoyed early success in producing barrel-aged products, such as their bourbon barrel aged version of Burnt Bottom Brown ale (Killer BBBBB’s) and Killer Queen BB’s, a bourbon barrel aged Imperial IPA (which I have tasted, and it is smooth and very good). After a “right place, right time” moment, SJMB was able to purchase barrels from Michigan’s Journeyman Distillery and immediately move into their barrel-aged program. The brewery’s next phase of their barrel-aged program will be brewing with the use of wine barrels.