New Upland brews highlighted at Yogi’s Beer School

Most of Yogi’s Grill and Bar was empty Tuesday evening and the jazz music was soft.
But around a horseshoe-shaped bar in the back of the facility, more than 50 thirsty patrons waited for their first round of free beer.

Every Tuesday at 7 p.m. Yogi’s offers Beer School, which offers a variety of free beer samples from a featured brewery, as well as demonstrations about different beer styles and brewing processes.

This week, Upland Brewing Company’s Head Brewer Caleb Staton and Sales Representative Jackson Heiss presented a range of five different brews crafted in Bloomington.

“I’m a much better brewer than I am a public speaker,” Staton said into a microphone before explaining Upland’s brewing process. Patrons listened under flat-screen televisions displaying ESPN broadcasts in the dimly lit bar.

“Beer School provides an opportunity to share our craft beer with people who may not normally venture out,” Heiss said. “It gives us an opportunity to surprise people with something new and different that they otherwise may have never tried on their own.”

As an added bonus, Upland provided an additional beer, a special Raspberry Lambic, which is red in color.

“The type of beers Upland brews fits into the category of craft beer, and there is a lot of education that goes along with our type of beer,” Staton said. “We generally have multiple styles of beer we’re doing throughout the year, and each one is unique.”

They also took the opportunity to discuss their new 35,000-square foot brewery, which will have an open house July 15.

The new facility will allow for a larger brew house, fermenter and conditioning tank.
The company began renovating the new building six or seven months ago, Staton said, which will not only allow for the production of a larger quantity of brews but will also allow the business to offer a larger diversity of craft beers.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep up with Wheat and Dragonfly (demands), which is the majority of what we do anyway,” Staton said. “Keeping up with those two beers has been a challenge for the last three or four years.”

The brewery currently sells more than 1 million bottles of beer per year in Indiana, Kentucky and Wisconsin, but the expansion will provide 15 to 20 percent more output.

“We’re going to be expanding the market and be pushing out into new territory down the road, and if everything goes according to plan, it may be fairly soon. We may possibly be in a new state,” Staton said.

Heiss said they are looking to distribute to Ohio next, bypassing Illinois because “Chicago is such a huge market.”

Yogi’s co-owner Chris Karl, who has co-owned the business since it first opened in 1992, said the best part of Beer School is giving customers an opportunity to try beers they have never tasted before. Although Beer School originated as a training program for Yogi’s employees about three years ago, it became open to the public in 2012.

“I do believe it helps us move products that people don’t know about or have just heard about. Once they actually try it they come back to have some,” Karl said, adding that it is hard to tell whether it has had a positive impact on the business financially.

About half the people who attend Beer School are regulars to the event, ranging from dedicated beer enthusiasts to newbies to the craft beer scene.

For Yogi’s server Sean Dupree, however, Beer School is a success.

Dupree, who began working part-time at Yogi’s four years ago while studying at IU, said he works every Tuesday during Beer School. He said the Bar School crowd will typically purchase drinks before or after the event.

“It’s good because it brings a bunch of people in here to try the beers,” Dupree said. “It’s free, so every time at 7 o’clock people come in here to try different beers.”