If you judge Indiana’s craft beverage scene by the Mass Ave taprooms and downtown Indy distilleries, you’re missing most of what the state makes. Some of the best beer, wine, and spirits in Indiana come from small towns you’d drive past on the way somewhere else. Here’s where to go.

Small-town breweries

Taxman Brewing Co. — Fortville

29 S Main St · Fortville

The flagship for small-town Indiana beer. Taxman opened its Fortville brewpub in 2017 in two restored historic buildings on Main Street — one of which was the old town jail. The brewery is known for Belgian-inspired beers, and Taxman Brewing Co. has medaled at the Great American Beer Festival — the top U.S. craft beer competition.

The Fortville space pairs the beer with a full kitchen (Belgian-leaning pub food, rotating seasonal menu), a long bar, exposed brick, and high ceilings. It’s the kind of space that would fit in downtown Chicago but sits on a two-block Indiana Main Street.

Event worth flagging: Death & Taxes Day is Taxman’s annual release and tasting festival — limited-release, barrel-aged, and special-edition pours. A serious Indiana beer-nerd pilgrimage day.

Drive time: ~30 minutes from downtown Indianapolis via I-69 north, exit SR-238.

Full profile on Fortville Guide →

Denver’s Garage Pizza and Brews — Fortville

110 E Broadway St · Fortville

Not strictly a brewery, but a beer-focused pizza destination in a preserved 1956 Phillips 66 service station. Weekly Thursday Music Bingo has become a ritual — 6 PM start, bingo with song clips instead of numbers. Good rotating draft list.

Full profile →

Beyond breweries — Indiana’s broader craft scene

Indiana’s craft beverage identity isn’t just beer. The state has a deep wine, distilling, cider, and mead scene — and the best venues are almost all in small towns. Our sister site Indiana Spirits is built specifically to cover this: a premium editorial directory of 120+ Indiana wineries, distilleries, cideries, and meaderies with full profiles, ratings, and county-by-county guides.

Here’s a taste of what’s on it.

Craft distilleries worth a drive

Indiana’s craft distilling scene has exploded since the mid-2010s. A few anchor venues:

Cardinal Spirits (Bloomington, Monroe County) — Bloomington’s first craft distillery. Distills, ages, and serves on-site. Highly rated by visitors.
450 North Spirits (Columbus, Bartholomew County) — Part of the beloved 450 North Brewing family on the historic Simmons farm. Handmade vodka, gin, rye whiskey, wheat whiskey, and Indiana Straight Bourbon.

For the full ranked list, Indiana Spirits maintains a continually updated Best Distilleries in Indiana page sorted by visitor reviews.

Wineries worth a weekend

Indiana’s wine country runs through the rolling hills of Brown County, the Ohio River valley, and the Uplands region in southern Indiana — plus pockets in central and northern Indiana.

A few names to know:

Brown County Wine Company (Nashville, Brown County) — Established in 1985 in the rolling hills of Nashville. Award-winning grape and fruit wines, two tasting rooms in Brown County.

Indiana Spirits organizes wineries by region:

Best Wineries in Southern Indiana — Brown County, Ohio River valley, Uplands. The heart of the state’s wine country.
Best Wineries in Central Indiana — Within easy driving distance of Indianapolis.
Best Wineries in Northern Indiana — Lake Michigan shoreline through Amish country.

If you want dog-friendly wine afternoons, there’s a Best Dog-Friendly Wineries in Indiana list too.

Cideries and meaderies

Quieter categories in Indiana but very much alive — several craft cideries and a handful of dedicated meaderies operate across the state. Indiana Spirits covers each individually at indianaspirits.com/cideries/ and /meaderies/.

Why small-town beverage venues punch above their weight

A few reasons the best Indiana craft beer, wine, and spirits often isn’t in Indianapolis:

Cheaper rent = better product. A Main Street space in Fortville or a winery in the Brown County hills costs a fraction of downtown commercial real estate. That money goes into better equipment, better ingredients, and longer aging.
Tight crowds = honest feedback. When your taproom or tasting room serves the same regulars every weekend, a bad batch doesn’t stay on the menu. Product gets better fast.
Terroir matters — and it’s in the countryside. The rolling hills of Brown County and the Uplands aren’t in Indianapolis; they’re in southern Indiana’s wine country. Likewise the farms that feed Indiana’s grain distillers.
Tourism is a feature, not a target. Taxman doesn’t need to be a tourist trap because half its customers are Indianapolis fans who drove 30 minutes on purpose. That pulls the focus back to the product.

Planning a trip

For beer: From Indianapolis, Fortville is an easy half-hour via I-69. Lunch at Denver’s Garage, walk Main Street, pints and dinner at Taxman. Under an hour round-trip driving, half a day round-trip doing it properly. (Read the full Fortville day-trip guide.)

For wine or spirits: The destinations are scattered across the state — Brown County (south), Bloomington (south-central), Columbus (south-central), Goshen and the northern lake region. Easier to plan a weekend or a regional loop than a day trip. Indiana Spirits’ county directory lets you plan by area.

The network

Indiana Town Guide is the hub for our hometown directory network. When you’re looking for small-town Indiana spirits, wineries, distilleries, and cideries specifically, head to our sister site:

Indiana Spirits — indianaspirits.com

It’s built specifically to cover the state’s craft beverage scene with full venue profiles, ratings, regional guides, and amenity filters (dog-friendly, kid-friendly, food on-site, wedding venues, etc.). If you like this post, that’s where to go next.

Indiana Small-Town Breweries (and Wineries, Distilleries, and More) Worth the Drive