What unfolds when the cherished traditions of IU enthusiasts collides head-on with the unwavering opinions of die-hard beer drinkers?

Workers at Upland Brewing Company have your answer.

“Hoosier Gameday is a Vienna-style lager,” said Upland’s Marketing Director Samantha Marr. “It’s a 4.7% ABV beer and its tagline is ‘It’s a classically smooth and refreshing beer’, and I think that’s probably the best way to describe it.”

Upland partnered with IU Athletics last year. Shortly after that is when Marr realized the first product they needed to release was an IU-themed beverage. 

But in order to successfully satisfy IU students, alumni and aficionados, the only option seemed to be to create a survey for fans to tell the brewery exactly what they wanted. Upland immediately partnered with a marketing team in an attempt to meet fans’ demands.

“We surveyed over 10,000 21 and up IU fans to see what sort of beer they wanted to make, what they wanted it to taste like and what they wanted it to be called,” Marr said. “The overwhelming response about the beer was that everybody wanted it to have candy stripes on the can, they wanted it to have Hoosier in the name and they wanted it to be a moderate ABV, kind of refreshing style beer.”

And with that feedback, Hoosier Gameday Lager was born.

After working on the design, taste and name for over a year, the beer was launched at the same time students returned to campus in August. This was intentional, as everything the malt-style beverage has to offer is centered around IU and its heritage. 

Known as the official beer of IU, tradition and community have to be at the heart of this beverage.

“IU is one of the best schools at kind of just carrying on tradition year after year,” Marr said.  “So we’re hoping to just kind of start a new tradition with IU fans. We just really wanted to make this beer what Bloomington and IU stand for.”

Marr said the majority of workers at the brewery are either from Bloomington or they graduated from IU, including Upland’s Southern Indiana Wholesales Manager Brian Hettmansperger.

As Bloomington’s head salesperson, Hettmansperger said he has been able to see the impact the beer has had on the community.

“The people are great, I love going in and seeing familiar faces and seeing how our beer is doing,” Hettmansperger said. “I call them partnerships because I want to support them. It’s not just good enough for us to get our beer into Nick’s for example, I want to make sure it sells there and I want to be able to make this a mutually successful endeavor.”

Besides reaching out to local vendors, Upland also wanted to give back to the university by helping students with their college tuition. 14% of all sales goes toward a scholarship fund for student athletes through IU’s Licensing and Trademarks Program. 

“It’s just a good way of giving back to the community,” Hettmansperger said. “We’ve done a lot of community outreach in the past and this is just one thing in a long line of things that we’ve done, but helping students specifically does feel good.”

The beer is available in all 92 Hoosier counties, and Upland plans to expand their sales market to the Windy City within the next year.