“This is a business of happiness,” Dave Colt says while sipping a beer he crafted. “What you do here is going to change someone’s life today. There is someone having a shitty day and all they can think about is five o’clock, coming here and drinking a beer that they love.”

Colt, the head brewer at the RAM downtown, resigned on April 2 to pursue the business of happiness with his good friend and former employee Clay Robinson as co-owner of Sun King Brewing Co. “Together we make one fully competent brewer,” Colt says, laughing with his partner.

That fully competent brewer is responsible for 70 Indiana State Fair medals, four Great American Beer Festival medals, and two Festival of Barrel Aged Beer awards and Colt is excited about the creative license that will come with having his own brewery. “There are styles of beer being born all the time,” he said, and hopefully he and Robinson will midwife more than a few of them into the world.

Colt began brewing as an apprentice at Circle V in 1996 and joined the RAM as an assistant brewer in 2000. He became head brewer in 2002. Colt’s last tapping will be held at the RAM on April 16 and will feature his Imperial Rye Pale, dubbed “the Last Dance,” a Maibock, and what is left of his GABF gold and silver medal winners, Old Jack Stout and Buffalo Bock, respectively.