I stayed out on the south side of Indianapolis on a trip to Southern Indiana and Kentucky a while back and I was on the look out for a place to try near my hotel. I usually have good luck at brew pubs and I found that the Oaken Barrel Brewing Co. wasn't too far from my hotel. I set out around 8:30 that particular evening to try the Oaken Barrel Brewing Co.
It turns out that Oaken Barrel Brewing Co. is one of the oldest brew pubs in the state of Indiana. Co-founder/owner Kwang Casey loved the Broad Ripple Brew Pub run by Englishman John Hill in Indianapolis' Broad Ripple neighborhood and that was his inspiration to open a similar brew pub on Indianapolis' south side. Along with Bill Fulton, Kwang opened the Oaken Barrel Brewing Company in 1994. Brook Belli was the brew master who oversaw the 15 barrel operation at Oaken Barrel for the first 10 years. It turned out that Belli had an assistant brewer who made quite a name for herself after leaving Oaken Barrel Brewing Co. Tonya Cornett moved from Indianapolis out to Bend, OR in 2002 to become the brew master at Bend Brewing Company. She eventually began to make some world class beers at Bend Brewing, and she was named small brew pub brew master of the year at the World Beer Cup competition held in San Diego in 2008.
Belli left Oaken Barrel in 2004 due to health reasons and Ken Price took over the brewing operations. Price, formerly of the Upland Brewing Company, was the brew master for the first two of Oaken Barrel's Brewer's Cup wins given annually at the Indiana State Fair. Oaken Barrel has won five of the Champion's Brewer Cups over the years.
Oaken Barrel has also been quite the incubator for a number of brew masters who got their start at the brew pub. Brew masters and assistant brew masters have gone on to oversee operations at places such as the Yazoo Brewing Co. in Nashville, Lafayette Brewing Company in Lafayette, IN (click here to see a Road Tips entry on Lafayette Brewing Co.), and the Broad Ripple Brew Pub in Indianapolis. And some have gone on to open their own brew pubs such as Black Swan Brew Pub in Plainfield, IN, and MashCraft Brewery, also in Greenwood, IN. One person who applied at Oaken Barrel, but was never officially hired was a guy by the name of Clay Robinson. He decided to go out on his own and he opened the acclaimed Sun King Brewery in downtown Indianapolis. Kwang Casey once quipped that opening the Sun King Brewery instead of working at Oaken Barrel was probably a "wise move" for Robinson.
Alan Simons is the current brew master at Oaken Barrel Brewing Company. Simons first cut his teeth on craft brewing as a consumer of beer, then he decided to get into the brewing business by learning the brewing trade as a volunteer at a handful of breweries. He was eventually hired as an assistant brewer at Thr3e Wise Men brewery in the Broad Ripple area of Indianapolis in 2010 and immersed himself into the finer points of brewing beer. When Oaken Barrel brew master Mark Havens was hired in late 2012 to run the production facility for Big Woods Brewery and Quaff On! in Nashville, IN and Bloomington, IN, he helped Casey find Alan Simons to take over the Oaken Barrel brewing operation.
My stomach was still on Central time when I set out to find the Oaken Barrel Brewing Company that evening. I was hungry, but I wasn't famished. I found the place in a corner of the Vista Village shopping center off of E. Main Street (see map). It's off the road on the north side and difficult to see if you didn't know it was there.
The brew pub is a pretty good sized place. There was a nice little tap room off to the right side when you come into Oaken Barrel Brewing. Even though there were people in there that evening, they had a sign in front of the door to the room that said it was closed.
The dining area was pretty sparse in terms of people. It featured some high-backed booths along with a row of tables with banquette seating along a wall.
I ended up taking a small booth in the bar area. My server for the evening - Lisa - came over with a menu. She asked me what I wanted to drink and I took a very quick look through their beer menu on the back of the dinner menu. I found a pale ale they called Gnaw Bone and ordered that. I would have to say that it was just all right.
The menu at the Oaken Barrel featured a number of brew pub-style appetizers - fried pickles, chicken wings, and pretzel sticks were the things that you see at similar places. But they also had some interesting items - Kwang's Dynamite Shrimp was one. It featured battered and fried shrimp tossed in a Thai chili sauce that was evidently developed by owner Kwang Casey. They also had Cajun beef tips with blackening seasons, as well as a Korean beef quesadilla mixing the flavors of Mexico and Korea with "bul-go-ghi" Korean barbecued beef with a mix of Southwestern flavors.
They had a number of entrees including a chicken enchilada plate, a sausage sampler entree, cedar plank salmon, mesquite smoked ribs and a pot roast with the beef braised in Oaken Barrel's Snake Pit Porter beer. They also had pizza, pasta dishes and a number of burgers on the menu. The menu was pretty diverse and I feared that they could probably do everything just all right, but do nothing very well.
I was sort of leaning toward a burger, but then I decided to look more closely at their sandwich selections. Indiana is sort of famous for their pork tenderloin sandwiches and Oaken Barrel Brewing had one prominently featured on their menu. They had a number of wraps on the menu including Buffalo chicken, the Dynamite shrimp mixture like the appetizer, and a Caesar chicken wrap.
Still sort of in that "in-between" state of being hungry and sort of ambivalent toward eating that evening, I ended up looking for something I hadn't had in quite sometime. I selected the Mile High reuben sandwich. This reuben was a little different from others as while it still included corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, it also came with chopped roasted red peppers on the sandwich. It was served on dark rye bread and lightly grilled. The sandwich was, well, all right. I did like the taste of the roasted red peppers on the sandwich, but other than that it was just an OK sandwich.
I had a choice of about a half dozen sides and for an upcharge I could get onion rings or waffle fries. Lisa talked me into the onion rings which she categorized as "very good". Unfortunately, she oversold the onion rings to me. They were crispy and a little overcooked. I think I had a couple three and called it quits on the rings.
My experience at Oaken Barrel Brewing Company was fine. The food was just all right, the beer was just all right, and Lisa's service was friendly and efficient. I walked away neither detesting the place, nor singing multitudes of praise. It's a nice place to get a microbrew and the food is average to slightly above average in my book. It's not the best brew pub I've been to, but certainly far from the worst.
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