Madison County Indiana Way Out Festival
In the Madison County town of Lapel, a brewery closes off a stretch of its own street once in a while, lines up pours from dozens of fellow producers, and invites the public to spend an afternoon sampling. That gathering is documented across 2023, 2024 and 2026, and it travelled from high summer into early autumn along the way: an August fixture in its first two recorded years, it landed on a September Saturday in 2026 wearing an alien theme. It is a home-grown event in the plainest sense, staged by the brewery whose taproom anchors the street where it happens.
The trail of coverage is itself part of the story. A beer blog looked back on the gathering in 2023, an event listing spelled out the 2024 edition in detail, the county visitors bureau carried the 2026 edition on its fall-events page, and a brewery podcast travelled to Lapel after the 2026 event to interview the brewers who had poured at it. Between those four kinds of witnesses, a small festival acquires an unusually complete paper trail for something that lasts a single afternoon.
About the Way Out Fest
Anyone searching for this event under the exact words of this article’s title will find a small puzzle, because no source layer gathered here actually calls it that. The county visitors bureau and an event-listing layer both bill it as the Way Out Beer Fest, while a brewery podcast and the bureau’s own body text shorten the name to Way Out Fest. A podcast transcript once used the phrase “the Way Out Festival’s” in passing, but only descriptively, never as the event’s printed name. This article therefore follows the published forms throughout: Way Out Beer Fest when the fuller billing is meant, Way Out Fest when the short one is.
The organiser, per the listing and podcast layers, is Pax Verum Brewing of Lapel. The setting given by the 2024 listing is Main Street in Lapel, directly in front of Pax Verum Brewing Co.’s taproom and the beer garden connected to it, so the festival quite literally unfolds on the brewery’s doorstep. Lapel itself is a small Madison County community; the county’s seat sits in Anderson rather than here, a distinction worth keeping because Anderson hosts plenty of Madison County events of its own and this is not one of them.
The naming question is worth settling early, because it shapes everything a reader can find. The listing layer, the bureau and the podcast agree on the substance — a Pax Verum beer festival on Main Street in Lapel — while differing on the label, and the label most sources print is the shorter pair of forms. A podcast transcript’s stray possessive shows how easily the bare Festival wording slips into speech, yet speech is not billing, and billing is what this article follows.
For a useful comparison, see the Madison County Indiana Indiana Black Expo, Anderson Chapter Summer Festival for another county festival.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Record |
| Published names | Way Out Beer Fest; Way Out Fest |
| Organiser | Pax Verum Brewing, of Lapel |
| Host town | Lapel, in Madison County, Indiana |
| County seat | Anderson holds that role for Madison County, not Lapel |
| Setting | Main Street in Lapel, outside the Pax Verum Brewing Co. taproom and its connected beer garden |
| Edition on record for 2023 | A Way Out gathering in August, described in a beer blog retrospective |
| Edition on record for 2024 | Saturday 17 August 2024, afternoon into evening, billed as the fourth annual running |
| Ticket figure on record | Forty dollars, from the 2024 listing only |
| Edition on record for 2026 | 19 September 2026, half past two to half past six in the afternoon |
| Theme for 2026 | An out-of-this-world alien theme, per the county visitors bureau |
History
The earliest portrait in the record comes from a beer blog’s retrospective written in 2023, which describes Pax Verum’s own Way Out festival as an August occasion that was already established by then and had sold out in the past. That single glimpse matters twice over: it shows the event predates its first fully listed edition, and it is the only attendance-flavoured remark anywhere in the material, a backward-looking comment rather than a crowd count.
One date in the layers is easy to misread, so it deserves care. A podcast layer notes that Pax Verum Brewing itself was launched in 2018. That year belongs to the brewery, not to its festival, and nothing in the record licenses treating 2018 as the gathering’s first year. Likewise, when the 2024 listing billed the event as the fourth annual Way Out Beer Fest, it supplied a billing and nothing more; working backwards from it to declare a founding year would be arithmetic, not evidence, and this article does not do it. What can honestly be said is narrower: an established August event by 2023, a fourth-annual billing in 2024, and a documented return in September 2026 after a shift of season.
The record also has a gap that deserves naming. No layer gathered here documents a 2025 edition, either to confirm one took place or to report a pause, so the accurate summary is a run of dated editions — 2023, 2024 and 2026 — rather than an unbroken chain. That silence is a further reason the fourth-annual billing cannot be turned into a founding year: the surviving layers are snapshots rather than a complete archive, and snapshots cannot support arithmetic about the years they happen to miss.
What to Expect
The pour list is the heart of the occasion. For the 2024 edition, the listing promised unlimited samples drawn from over thirty breweries, wineries and distilleries, gathered along Main Street for an afternoon that ran into the evening. Sampling, rather than full pours by the glass, is the format the record describes, with the host brewery’s own taproom and beer garden forming the backdrop and the home base.
By 2026 the presentation had grown more theatrical. The county visitors bureau’s fall-events page framed that year’s Way Out Fest with an out-of-this-world alien theme: an interstellar line-up of craft beer, spirits, ciders and food, set against a backdrop of alien abductions and unexplained phenomena. A brewery podcast episode published on 25 October 2026 then reported visiting the 2026 gathering in Lapel and interviewing brewers who took part, which suggests the day also functions as a meeting point for the producers themselves, not only for the people holding the glasses.
Set side by side, the two fullest editions show two flavours of the same afternoon. The 2024 version reads as a straightforward tasters’ gathering: a long line of producers, unlimited samples, a street given over to drinking and talking until evening. The 2026 version layers theatre over that skeleton, playing on the Way Out name with alien abductions and unexplained phenomena as the decoration. The constants across both are the host brewery, the street and the sampling format; the variable is how much costume the brewery wraps around them.
Planning Your Visit
One afternoon is the entire shape of this event, and planning works best when it respects that scale. The 2026 edition ran from half past two until half past six, a four-hour window at Pax Verum Brewing Co. on 19 September. Earlier editions were August affairs: the 2023 gathering belonged to that month, and the 2024 edition filled the afternoon and evening of Saturday 17 August on Main Street. Because the month itself moved between 2024 and 2026, anyone watching for a future edition should confirm the season from the newest listing rather than assuming August out of habit.
Money needs the same caution. The single ticket figure anywhere in the record is the forty dollars printed in the 2024 listing, and it belongs to that year’s edition alone. The bureau’s fall-events page for 2026 gives no ticket price at all, so there is no documented basis for quoting one. Treat the forty-dollar figure as history, check the current listing before setting a budget, and expect the practical details — hours, month, price — to be settled edition by edition by the brewery and the bureau between them.
Hours deserve the same edition-by-edition treatment. The 2024 listing promised an afternoon running on into the evening, whereas the bureau’s 2026 page fixed a tighter window, from half past two to half past six. Neither listing mentions a second day, a rain arrangement or any extension of the hours, so plans built around one bounded afternoon are the only plans the documentation supports.
A Sample Afternoon
An itinerary for the 2026 shape of the day might run as follows. Arrive on Main Street in Lapel near the half past two start, when the full four hours still lie ahead and the taproom and beer garden are just filling. Spend the first stretch working along the line of producers at a sampling pace, since the 2024 format was built on unlimited samples rather than large pours. Pause midway for food — the bureau’s 2026 description places food alongside the craft beer, spirits and ciders — and take in the alien dressing that gave that edition its character. Use the later part of the afternoon for return visits to favourite pours and conversation, and plan to drift away as the half past six close arrives, with the street returning to ordinary small-town use behind you.
The Same Name, Other Places
The words “Way Out Festival” travel further than Lapel. They also name a destination inside the video game Keep Driving, a purely fictional stop that has nothing to do with Indiana, brewing or Main Street. Unrelated music festivals outside Indiana have used the same name as well, and their line-ups, dates and crowds belong to those events alone. Anyone reading about a Way Out Festival should therefore check the context: if the subject is not Pax Verum Brewing, Lapel and a street of samples, it is a different thing wearing the same words. Even within Indiana record-keeping, precision helps, since the local event’s own published names are the Beer Fest and Fest forms rather than the bare Festival wording of this article’s title.
Checklist
- Confirm the month before making plans, because the event moved from August to September between 2024 and 2026.
- Note the published names, Way Out Beer Fest and Way Out Fest, when searching for current listings.
- Budget from the latest listing only; the forty-dollar ticket belongs to 2024 and no 2026 price is documented.
- Aim to arrive near the start of the afternoon window to use the full sampling time.
- Pace the samples, since the documented format is unlimited sampling rather than full pours.
- Leave room for food, which the 2026 bureau description lists alongside the drinks.
Beyond the Festival
The festival’s world is deliberately small. Its documented geography is one Lapel street, one taproom and one connected beer garden, and its documented cast is one brewery and the producers it invites. The podcast layer’s note that Pax Verum Brewing launched in 2018 places the host as a relatively young business, and the 2023 retrospective’s remark that its festival had already sold out in the past hints at a local following built quickly. Beyond those strokes, the record offers little about the town’s wider calendar, and this article leaves that space blank rather than filling it with scenery the sources never described.
Why It Matters Locally
Small breweries often pour at other people’s festivals; Pax Verum instead built one of its own, on its own street, under a name playful enough to carry an alien theme by 2026. The documented run — established by 2023, billed as fourth annual in 2024, and still drawing podcast visitors in 2026 — shows a young brewery using a single afternoon a year, or thereabouts, to pull dozens of fellow producers and a sampling crowd into the middle of Lapel. That kind of anchor event gives a small town a date that is unmistakably its own.
There is a documentary significance too. Because a blog, a listing service, a visitors bureau and a podcast each captured a different edition, this festival can be watched changing — acquiring a theme, moving its month, keeping its street — in a way that larger festivals covered only by their own publicity rarely allow. For a one-afternoon event in a small town, that is a richer legacy than most.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is this Lapel beer event actually called?
Its published names are Way Out Beer Fest and Way Out Fest. The county visitors bureau and an event-listing layer use the Beer Fest form, a brewery podcast and the bureau’s body text use the shorter Fest form, and no layer gathered here presents the bare words Way Out Festival as the event’s name.
Who organises the Way Out Fest in Lapel?
Pax Verum Brewing, the Lapel brewery whose taproom and connected beer garden front the Main Street site, is the organiser named in the listing and podcast layers.
Has the festival always taken place in the same month?
No. The 2023 gathering and the fully listed 2024 edition both belonged to August, while the 2026 edition moved to 19 September, so the season itself has shifted within the short documented record.
What did a ticket cover at the 2024 edition?
The 2024 listing priced its ticket at forty dollars and promised unlimited samples from over thirty breweries, wineries and distilleries. That price and that promise belong to the 2024 listing; no ticket figure is documented for 2026.
What to Expect From the Next Madison County Indiana Way Out Festival
How often is Madison County Indiana Way Out Festival held?
The 2024 listing billed the event as the fourth annual Way Out Beer Fest, and editions are documented for 2023, 2024 and 2026, which points to a yearly rhythm even though the surviving record does not cover every single year.
When is the next Madison County Indiana Way Out Festival?
The most recent edition in the material gathered here is the one held on 19 September 2026, and none of the sources consulted names a date beyond it, so the next date will come from the brewery or the county visitors bureau when they publish it.
Will the dates change?
They already have, at least by month: August hosted the 2023 and 2024 editions, while September hosted 2026. A future edition could sit in either month, and only a fresh listing will settle which.
Closing Thoughts
Judged strictly on its documents, the Way Out Fest is a modest entry in Madison County’s calendar: one brewery, one street, one afternoon. Its record is unusually honest about its own limits — names that differ from the title people search for, a founding year nobody states, a price that applies to one edition only. What survives those limits is a clear picture of a small-town brewery throwing its own party and, by 2026, dressing it up with aliens.
