03 Aug TwoDEEP Brewing’s Owner Andy Meyer Reflects On Company’s 1st Anniversary
TwoDEEP Brewing’s 1st anniversary party Saturday mirrored last year’s grand opening by bookending it with picture-perfect weather that surrounded the brewery’s inaugural year. Owner Andy Meyer graciously sat down with me for a few minutes just as party revelers were filing in, discussing the beer, the brand and hints of what may be happening in the future.
Q. Last year’s grand opening and your anniversary today look exactly like the same days. What has happened at TwoDEEP in the meantime? How do you summarize the first year?
A. We couldn’t ask for anything more beautiful than today! The first year is a bag of tricks. We’ve seen it all, from the good brews to the bad brews, we’ve learned a lot…we’ve learned our system limitations, we’ve learned what it can do, what it can’t do. We’ve learned what we are good at, in terms of beers that we make, the styles that we make. And I would say that the biggest surprise that I had after opening a year ago was what the taproom would do. I always wanted to have a place where people could come and hang out, kick their feet up and have kind of that coffee shop mentality but in a beer setting. But I had no idea how far that would really take off. It’s incredibly flattering to have people show up day after day, week after week, turn this place into their own “Cheers”, if you will. We have a lot of neighborhood people around here who show up every Thursday or every Wednesday. That is beyond flattering to see that kind of support.
Do you think the city caught on after word of mouth and how it happened was that maybe it was better, slower?
I definitely agree. I think I had this idea in the back of my mind, if you build the taproom right, maybe we’ll create foot-soldiers that will then kind of disperse, go out and then request our beer at all the different places they go drinking. As much a pipe dream as that was, I think a little of it kind of helped get our distribution off the ground.
What have been your most popular beers to date, and you mentioned you are doing some of your beers better than your others. What are those?
I would say the first part of that, the popular beers seem to always fall on the (Knightstick) cream ale, the (Red Sunday) Irish red, a lot of people love the (Kunkel) Dunkelweizen that we do. Our (They’ve Gone To Plaid) Scotch ale has also been a huge hit.
We kind of fell into this niche of being a malt purposed brewery. I love IPA’s and I love hoppy beer but when it comes to brewing, to me there’s a whole other side going on out there. Yes, hoppy beers are the rave right now which is great, but there’s just so much other stuff that I feel that we can offer people, on top of creating hoppy beers as well. So I think what we’ve found as our niche is creating beers like our southern English stout, our Scotch ale, our Brickhouse, which is the roast ale, some of these malt-centric, malt-forward beers.
Those have always been my favorite as well. So do you think you are helping in not only filling that void but maybe bringing it to people’s attention who have never had it?
Definitely, definitely. There’s just a lot of styles that just aren’t commonly available, I guess we’ll call it that, and I think additionally, we love German beers too. Our German dunkelweizen, the lagers that we’ve done, the “19 Day Maibock” and the “Helluvadortfest” (German Lager). I understand now after doing them for a year why breweries don’t do them. I kind of had an idea in the beginning but now I truly get it! You tie up tank space for a long time but at the same time, you get a beer that you just cannot duplicate on a short cycle. So, I have a deep appreciation.
We’ve had our Oktoberfest sitting in the tank since the end of May so we’re getting ready to put that thing into kegs here soon (end of August). There’s a lot of trust you’ve got to put into that kind of beer but at the same time I really feel that it opens a whole different world for people to experience beer.
Andy said they will be expanding their barrel aging program and using wine and port barrels with their own beers. He said, “that’s the beauty of being in this business. Yes, there’s half of it science, the other half is art…have fun!!”
TwoDEEP also will start canning production in the next month, and he let on about the artwork, saying, “I’ll call it ‘clean’ yet it still has fun, if that makes any sense at all. The way we’ve built the taproom and the way we’ve kind of built our brand and who we are, I think the can will easily flow into that. It’ll all make sense when you see it.” They are choosing 4-pack 16 oz. cans with different lids and perhaps the “360 lid”, which is like drinking out of a pint glass.
Purposely avoiding the obvious bad pun and saving it more appropriately for next year, TwoDEEP is one year in and has prepared itself for even further success. If you haven’t been there yet, do yourself a favor and visit the ultra-cool, industrial/contemporary-chic taproom, relax with a delicious pint and say hi to Andy.
Cheers!
TwoDEEP Brewing is located at 714 N. Capitol Ave. in downtown Indianapolis.
You can follow Rick Burkhardt on Twitter @indybeersleuth or reach him at indybeersleuth@gmail.com.
Photos courtesy of Rick Burkhardt and Kristina Traxler of the Writing & Reporting Community
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