Brewmaster & Awards

John Dean, our award winning brewmaster, joined the Blind Tiger Brewery in 2001 and has won 21 national and international awards since joining us.  See the link at the top of our home page for the impressive awards list.

 

Brewing System

We have a 14 barrel brewhouse built by JV Northwest.  Consisting of a combined mash tun/lauter tun, a combined kettle/whirlpool, a hot liquor vessel, and a cold liquor vessel.

 

We have 9 fermenters, including four 15 barrel fermenters, one 54 barrel fermenter, two 2 barrel fermenters, and two 30 barrel fermenters, together providing 178 barrels of fermentation capacity.  These tanks are not encased in glass which allows our patrons to visit with our brewers as they check the progress of each batch.

 

Cellar Number One contains three 15 barrel bright tanks and ten 7 barrel antique British Grundy vessels.  We have just added Cellar Number Two with twelve 15 barrel bright tanks, also from JV Northwest.

 

We have expanded the brewing system three times since 2010 to get to the above size.  We are still a relatively small brewery consisting of only 38 modest steel vessels so our brewery has a capacity of around 2000 barrels per year.  We believe in quality first and quantity second.

 

Distribution

About 90% of the beer we brew is sold right across our bar.  The other 10% we sell through our distributor.  Several of our beers are in distribution in about a dozen restaurants in and around Topeka.  We do not have enough beer for our distribution to expand.  As we continue to slowing expand our brewing system we will gradually increase our distribution radius.