Sun King Brewery: An Indianapolis Hotspot

Sun King Brewery is one of the best-kept secrets in Indianapolis. I had the opportunity to visit on a rainy Saturday during parents weekend at Butler University. I could not have asked for a more fun rainy day experience to share with my dad.

Instead of spending time on campus for parents weekend, we decided to go downtown for the day. The plan was to walk around the White River State Park and maybe rent a bike. That was the plan before it rained anyways. We needed to find a great indoor location, and we did. We found Sun King Brewery.

The brewery was packed when we arrived and the brewery tour that we were planning on going on was full. We decided to sign up for one at next time slot. To kill time, we hung out in the tasting room and sampled beer.

The beer sampling ended up being even more fun than the tour. We were each give six tokens to be used for sample glasses of beer. While in the tasting room, a handful of people came up to us and gave us tickets they were not planning to use. As a result, we were able to sample and rank most of the beer.

Our favorite was the “Wee Mac”. This is a dark Scottish beer that is toffee colored. It has a sweet malty taste and is not very bitter or too thick. Another great beer is “Stiff Upper Lip.” This brew was only available for the month of November and is modeled off of the event “Movember” – so you’ll have to check it out again in 2013. It is a malty brown lager with a crisp taste of hops.

The brewery tour was an incredibly interesting experience and a chance to learn how Sun King is made, packaged, distributed and marketed. The most interesting thing that I learned was that beer actually tastes better preserved in a can than a bottle. A bottle cannot protect against the sun like a can.

The sampling room and the tour itself were a great way to spend a rainy Saturday. I would recommend it to anyone looking to think outside the box and have a great time in Indianapolis.

[Ed. We took a trip to Sun King earlier in 2012 and shot a short video about the brewery. Check it out below or click here to view the video on YouTube]