LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Two nights before his People’s Brewing Co. was scheduled to deliver Boiler Gold American Golden Ale, the first beer officially branded through Purdue University, Chris Johnson was sweating a bit.

The brilliant gold labels featuring the Boilermaker Special logo and stamped with the year of the school’s founding, “1869,” from top to bottom had been printed in St. Louis. But they wound up being shipped to the wrong warehouse, leaving final production of the cans in Logansport until the last minute.

The beer he had at People’s brewing facilities on North Ninth Street in Lafayette. Plenty, in fact, to put in kegs to deliver 2,000 samples for the beer’s debut Friday at Indianapolis’ Monument Circle for the Circle Up Boiler Tailgate, an afternoon pep rally ahead of Saturday’s Purdue-Louisville football game at Lucas Oil Stadium.

And a run of 150 cases of Boiler Gold wasn’t due to Ross-Ade Stadium for another week, ahead of Purdue’s Sept. 8 game against Ohio. For starters, Boiler Gold will be sold only during Purdue games and in the 1869 Tap Room in the Purdue Memorial Union. Later, People’s will distribute six packs to retailers in Indiana and the Chicago area in time for the holidays.

There was one small detail: “Mitch Daniels wants some cans to show on the Circle,” Johnson said. “It’s going to happen.”

A half-hour later, with pallets of the 16-ounce cans and specially sourced gold tops with black tabs in hand, the crews at People’s had a home football game’s shipment of Boiler Gold canned, stacked and ready for delivery.

By noon, one of the first cans found its way to the Purdue president’s office in Hovde Hall.

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Did Daniels crack one open for the first taste?

“There are some things I’m just not at liberty to disclose,” Daniels said. “I’ll just say that as self-designated quality control officer, I do have certain responsibility.”

And, yes, Daniels will have cans ready to show off in Indianapolis.

“You can bet I’m going to be the marketing department now that we’re into this. It’s going to be an easy sell, I’m thinking,” Daniels said. “The whole story is fascinating.”

Boiler Gold was born out of collaborations between Hoosier craft brewers – there are more than 130 in the state, according to the Indiana Brewers Guild – and Purdue’s Department of Food Sciences, which runs the Hops and Brewing Analysis Lab.

Johnson said that since People’s opened in 2009, the brewery has been tapping into Purdue expertise for everything from the feasibility of locally grown hops – generally a specialty of less humid climates in the Pacific Northwest – to marketing help from the Krannert School of Management.

Brian Farkas, head of Purdue’s food sciences, compared the relatively new Hops and Brewing Analysis Lab to the Purdue Wine and Grape Team, which has been putting university research in the hands of Indiana’s wine industry.

“That really is the benchmark for working collaboration between Purdue and the beverage industry, in this case,” Farkas said. “The wine grape program has been around 25 years or so, supporting the wine industry, offering workshops, doing analysis on soil quality on wine grapes and more. So we’re kind of modeling after that, offering support to the hops industry and the grain industry as it tries to come around, and to the craft breweries with analysis.”

Purdue plans to add a minor in fermentation to its food science program, starting in fall 2018. Plans are to expand that to a major after that. Farkas said brewing is just the tip of fermentation sciences, which are used in the study of bio-fuels, agri-chemicals, pharmaceuticals and various parts of food science.

“We see that beer with Purdue’s name is a visible way to grab students’ attention – to show them this cool factor in the science field,” Farkas said. “And what Chris and the rest of People’s did here for Purdue really has the cool factor.”

The money Purdue gets from licensing Boiler Gold will be put back into research.

Johnson said talk about brewing a beer specifically for Purdue came a year ago. It was about the time Purdue opened the 1869 Tap Room, which is next to Pappy’s Sweet Shop in the basement of the Purdue Memorial Union. The tap room is stocked with some of the 40 or so beers People’s brews.

“This is basically people from the (Indiana Brewers) Guild and the university and different people sitting around the table talking about ways to build this program,” Johnson said.

Johnson described Boiler Gold as a traditional American golden ale, brewed with hops harvested from HopKnoXious Farms or The Pines Farm, both in Tippecanoe County. The closest comparison to the People’s roster: Ol’ Tavern, a lager based on the style brewed in Lafayette in the late 19th century.

“It’s sort of the ale counterpart to the American lager,” Johnson said. “Light, easy drinking, but full flavor. … Still, it’s not aggressive. We wanted it to be an approachable beer for a broad audience.”

People’s has other partnership beers, including Nine Irish Red brewed for Nine Irish Brothers restaurants based in West Lafayette, and Battalion American Pale Ale, brewed for the Brickyard Battalion, a group of supporters for the Indy Eleven soccer club.

Purdue isn’t the first university with its own beer. Farkas and Johnson rattled off a handful: University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana State, University of California-Davis, New Mexico State and Colorado State.

Daniels said he’d put Boiler Gold up against any of them.

“I was sold on the idea pretty early on, but I told everyone that if it’s got our name on it, it’s got to be good,” Daniels said. “I insisted on approval rights, and I got them. … Is it good? It’s better than that.”

Daniels will be the one showing off the cans in Indianapolis Friday afternoon.

Reach J&C columnist Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@gannett.com.