Bierkultur

For any casual beer drinker, it can be difficult to break into the craft beer scene.
Between hop varieties, malt characteristics, yeast strains and even just the 23 styles of beer recognized by the Beer Judges Certification Program, there’s a lot to learn.

Luckily, Yogi’s Grill and Bar on the corner of East Tenth Street and North Indiana Avenue has you covered. They offer a weekly “beer school” at 7 p.m. Tuesdays as a primer to the art of enjoying craft brews.

Each week, Yogi’s brings in brewers and beer reps who know the beer well and can talk about it to the most in-depth beer geek and the craft beer newbie.

“We try to keep beer school interesting by continually learning ourselves,” Jackson Heiss, Yogi’s bar manager, said. “The beautiful thing about having the brewers themselves come in is that there is literally no question they can’t answer about their beer.”

It started as a program for Yogi’s employees to learn more about the beer on tap. It has since expanded to an opportunity for the public to come in, enjoy some good brews and have a chance to talk with some great brewers.

This past Tuesday, Yogi’s played host to Sun King Brewery from Indianapolis, who brought in cans and growlers of some of its newest, best brews.

Sun King is just coming off its sweep of the Great American Beer Festival, with an unheard-of eight medals for its various brews.

At beer school, Sun King sales manager Eric Fear and brewer James Hellmuth showed off their Sunlight Cream Ale, Wee Mac Scottish Ale, Osiris Pale Ale, Dominator Dopplebock and Isis Imperial IPA.

Both the Osiris Pale Ale and Iris Imperial IPA showed off Sun King’s specialty: hops. Fear admitted that almost all the brewers were huge hopheads and loved playing with pale ales with strong, bitter hop character and fruity hop flavor.

A solid example is the Grapefruit Jungle, an IPA that sold out within days at the brewery. Fear couldn’t even get a growler to bring to beer school in Bloomington. Yogi’s has a precious six-barrel order that is worth checking out while it’s still around.

Sun King brewers mixed citra, emerald and cascade hops in what turns out to create astonishing grapefruit notes and a blend of fruit taste. Fear said there was no fruit added, only hop character.

“If you order this and don’t like it, I’ll buy it from you,” Fear told the group at Yogi’s. “It’s that good.”

Hops might be what the Sun King brewers love best, but they still make a damn fine dark. Hellmuth said malt character is his big thing, and he’s one of the few guys at Sun King who really digs brews such as the dopplebock more than a pale ale.

“I’m not anti-hop, I just went through that phase, and I loved it,” he said. “Now I like nice, malty beers.”

The dopplebock was divine. As the namesake suggests, it’s a double-strong lager that, as Fear described, is pretty much liquid bread. The style was originally created to get fasting monks through the season of Lent.

“If you couldn’t have anything but this for a month, we’d probably be a little skinny and a lot drunker, but we’d be alive,” Fear said.

It tastes like a heavy, dark German loaf of bread. Its strong malt character and undeniable bock texture makes me definitely want to come back for more.

I’ll also be coming back to beer school. The opportunities to chat with the pros and learn a whole lot more about a whole lot of great beers is worth taking a Tuesday night off. Plus, Yogi’s tap selection is always worth a gander.

“There is no other place in town that has even close to the number of options we’ve got,” Heiss said. “We also refuse to let it get stale. We are changing the beer menu almost every couple of days.”