Jeff Eaton beat much of the crowd to the brewing scene in central Indiana, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a long journey.
Eaton began home brewing with friends in the late ‘80s and before he knew it, he was drawing up a business plan for what is now Barley Island Brewing Co.
Today, he is planning to expand. His small operation brewpub will soon add a larger scale bottling line, which will be used to service more of the Midwest.
“We need more room,” Eaton said. “I spend hours each week just moving stuff around.”
In their space that is proving too small for their growth, Eaton and his employees currently label each bottle by hand and then fill them with their various brews before shipping them off to all corners of Indiana and Chicago.
Eaton hasn’t always been the brewpub’s head brewer. Previously, the brewing side of the operation was manned by a succession of brewers, first of which was John Lang, who is now the head brewer of Triton Brewing Company on Indianapolis’ northeast side.
Together, Lang and Eaton brewed a number of notable beers. Most notably, Dirty Helen, a brown ale named after a foul-mouthed tavern owner from Noblesville, Ind. The beer won best American brown ale in 2009 at the Great American Beer Festival, the largest of such competitions in the United States.
Eaton has been judging similar competitions in Indiana since 2002, a skill that has helped him perfect his own brews.
“I like the control over the process; the creativity, the ingredients, tweaking things with the grain or with the hops,” Eaton said.
Eaton said having the pub connected to his brewhouse is an advantage Barley Island has over stand-alone breweries.
“The difference would be that we’re a brewpub with packaging so we have both a restaurant/bar as well as the production side,” Eaton said. “That configuration allows us to try out new beers with our customers in the restaurant/bar and perfect them before doing any bottling or kegging.”
Eaton’s beers can be found in bottles around Muncie and on the rotating taps at Be Here Now.
