A ‘Tapestry Of Obscenity’ Is Woven At Indiana Brewery

With Father’s Day coming, grab your dad a can of Bad Dad. Or promise him a trip to Fairmont, Indiana to meet the “original bad dad.”

Up until 2017, Fairmont, Indiana was known for two things: being the hometown of James Dean and Garfield, the fat comic strip cat.

But in 2017, entrepreneur and home brewer Barry Howard and his two sons, Patrick and Derek, decided to take their hobby and turn it into a professional enterprise.

“The concept of it (dates back) to Derek and I have always worked for our family growing up, and from eight to 18, we were usually working in the summer, and we’d always complain that we had a bad dad, and our friends had a good dad,” says Patrick.

“Also, we all have had some store of parenting gone wrong, and usually, it’s specifically with the father, and that’s kind of what we put into the brand,” he adds.

“I’m the original bad dad,” Barry admits. “The idea is a fun takeoff because everyone relates to the dad who didn’t do the smart thing.”

So, they took the concept to Pivot Marketing, which helped translate their experimental craft brews and turn them into pop cultural works of art, as each can boasts an artistic design, comes with its own dad joke, and references bad dads everywhere with a cheeky name and equally cheeky description.

“So, aside from it’s fun to have a theme and put a smile on your face, you have to have a good product, and we have not been able to keep up with production demand,” says Barry. “The next phase is to scale it up. Right now, we would be a beer categorized as a nano, micro-style of a brewery.”

The first beer they made was a hoppy style wheat that wasn’t particularly memorable, but the second one was an IPA, and that one, well, that one set the tone for everything else that follows.

“The second one, we branded it with the name of A Tapestry of Obscenity,” says Patrick. “That’s our biggest seller, and we hit it early.”

The India pale ale’s nomenclature references Poor Ralpie from the movie, A Christmas Story, and when his family experienced a flat tire, his dad changed the tire, and of course, as he changed it, he swore up a storm, which Ralpie described as “a tapestry of obscenity.”

This brewing family continued with the theme in the décor of their brewpub and craft pizzeria. “You got it, we have the official leg lamp in the brew pub,” says Barry.

You’re Grounded, Mister coffee stout with chocolate, Pull My Finger India pale ale and Socks and Sandals blonde ale followed.

But it was the pizzeria part of their business that helped the brewing part gain traction, especially during quarantine. “It’s kind of a funny timing,” says Patrick. “We actually were in an international pizza magazine in February, and that pushed people to find us during this whole Covid thing, and a big reason is we’ve been able to sustain is carryout.”

Prior to the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders, the brew pub focused on dine-in, but they shifted to take-out, and the demand has been so great that they had to install a second pizza oven to keep up.

“Covid really pushed us into carryout, and it’s given us a whole new revenue stream we had never seen before,” says Derek.

The pizza and their beer has inspired lots of new people within the state to drive to visit Bad Dad.

“We were pleasantly surprised,” Patrick says. “We have people come for curbside, and they tell us ‘I drove an hour to get your stuff.’”

“We define the term destination location,” Barry says, as the town of Fairmont boasts a population of only 2,300 people, and it’s halfway between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis.

“It really is the middle of nowhere,” adds Derek. “Coming here is an adventure in and of itself, and people often come back after their first visit, and that’s the most important thing.”

Right now, Indiana, as a state, is in the process of opening back up, but the demand for takeout and curbside pickup continues. “My own observation is that people are getting out more, but they’re still abiding by social distancing guidelines,” says Derek. “But they’re doing it in creative ways, seeing places in the state they’ve never seen or heard of before, and it’s actually that reason that has brought in a lot more people into the Bad Dad taproom and brand.”

“I don’t think we’ve had anybody out of state visit us,” Patrick says.

The other day, Barry says, they had a woman drive in from out of town, but she didn’t realize that the brewpub was closed. This original bad dad and his boys took care of her, making sure she had some beer and pizza to go, and they even threw in a few of their beer cozies for free.

The cozies, of course, look like pairs of tidy whities.

This weekend, they’re serving up their first-ever Father’s Day brewski, and it’s a Belgian quad made with fruit.

“We’d been trying to figure out a good name,” says Patrick. “You can only use a name once so it’s got to be a good name, and we’d been throwing out some things, and then our brewer, Jack, said ‘How about we throw some plums in this thing and call it Plummer’s Crack.”

So, they’ll be serving up pints of Plummer’s Crack, but next year, they hope to serve it up with a side of a Father’s Day festival.

“We definitely want to capitalize on Father’s Day,” says Barry. “It’s the underserved holiday.”