Carol Kugler • The Herald-Times
Bloomington Brewing Co., founded in 1994, has new owners as of Wednesday afternoon.
After the closing of the sale was complete, new owners Amanda and Jarrod Franklin and the founders and former owners, Jeff Mease and Lennie Busch, met at the westside Bloomington Brewing Co. production facility for a celebratory toast with Kirkwood Cream Ale.
For the past six months, Mease and Busch, who co-own One World Enterprises, had been quietly looking for someone to take over the brewery.
"We've gotten clear over the years that we are food and hospitality people," Mease said. "The beer production business is a whole other thing."
Bloomington Brewing Co. was Bloomington's first brewpub
While Bloomington Brewing Co. was one of the first operations the two began, following the creation of Lennie's restaurant in 1989, the brewery has remained small, making six to nine craft beers.
The brewery was adjacent to Lennie's when it was in the Crosstown II shopping center on East 10th Street, and it became Bloomington's first brewpub. Before Lennie's moved to East Kirkwood Avenue, the brewery moved production to its current location on Industrial Park Drive.
"We both realized that the brewery was the one that someone else would be better suited (for) if we could find the right people," Mease said.
Bloomington couple buys brewery
When Jarrod and Amanda Franklin heard about the potential sale of the brewery, they were interested. The Bloomington couple had considered opening a restaurant or brewery for years. They talked with Jarrod's longtime friend and brewer Zech Algood and reached out to Chris Welsh, one of the owners of Four Day Ray Brewing in Indianapolis.
"All the pieces came together," Amanda Franklin said, adding when they asked Welsh if they should purchase the brewery, he replied, "'Yes, and we want to be a part of it.'"
The "we" are the three owners of Four Day Ray: Welsh, Brian Graham and Mitch Ackerman. They are part of the entity formed to purchase the brewery and will help with logistics, Amanda said, but Bloomington Brewing Co. will remain in Bloomington. And it will continue to produce the beers people have come to request at area restaurants and stores.
Algood, who has worked at Upland Brewing Co., will become the brewer at BBC, which created the first craft beer he ever tasted.
Algood and the Franklins plan to expand the styles of beers produced by BBC. The three have traveled to Germany, sampling beers there, and hope to provide a traditional German style beer, at least seasonally, as well as other brews.
Jarrod Franklin's goal is to get BBC beers on tap in every restaurant in Bloomington and beyond.
"We've got a good foundation with six to seven beers," he said. "We'll build on that."
Creating the craft movement in Indiana
While Mease and Busch are getting out of production, the craft brewery they created began after the two wanted to offer craft beers at their restaurant. In 1989, the first craft beers made in what were then called micro-breweries were just beginning to become popular across the nation.
Indiana laws at the time did not allow craft breweries to operate in a way that was economically feasible. Mease attended national brewing conferences and researched how other states had changed laws to allow craft breweries to operate. He then worked with the state restaurant association and helped draft a bill that was passed by the General Assembly in 1993.
That allowed Bloomington Brewing Co. to open in 1994. Its first customer was Trojan Horse, and Best Beer, a Bloomington distributor, began to sell the beers to others.
"A lot of independent restaurants sell our beer," Mease said.
Lennie's will continue to sell Bloomington Brewing Co. beer, as will One World Catering. But Mease and Busch will now just be purchasing the brews, as do other customers.
While sitting on a bag of corn used in the production of Kirkwood Cream Ale at Wednesday's celebration, Busch raised her can of the same ale and toasted, "Good to see young-uns coming in to take over."
Contact Carol Kugler at ckugler@heraldt.com, 812-331-4359 or @ckugler on Twitter.