One Month - Five Texas Breweries (#44)

Three friends at Shiner

The American Craft Brewing industry is finding a foothold here in Texas...and I couldn't be more thrilled!  Hopefully legislation will follow that makes doing business here in Texas a little easier for them.  A girl can only hope...and write to her local legislators to support reform like HB660.  But on with the tour!

Thirsty Planet Tap Room

Austin has recently been honored with several new brewing venues.  I welcome them all with open arms! In February Phil and I made our second visit to Thirsty Planet Brewing, located off 290 just west of the Oak Hill Y on Circle Drive.  Thirsty has a couple "anchor" beers like Thirsty Goat, Yellow Amadillo and my favorite, Buckethead IPA. In addition, they brew small specialty batches.  Brian and his wife are great additions to our brewing community here and we are glad they picked Austin to open their venue.  Besides brewing good beer, they are warm, welcoming and community minded.  Some of their beers give a portion of the profits to causes such as the Amadillo (local cancer research/support) and the small batch Silverback Ale (for gorillas of course!) that we sampled during our visit. Phil who rarely embibes beer enjoyed the small batch Ginger Beer.

Thirsty has been offering two tours on Saturday, one late morning and one early afternoon.  You can order and print tickets on line (recommended).  When you arrive you can buy the $7 pint glass and get bigger and better tastes.  The pub style tasting room has a wonderful atmosphere and the staff have been very friendly both visits.  It amazes me that they are so willing to "talk shop" with the home brewers in the group.  I do not doubt they will be successful here and hope they continue to stay grounded.

The next Saturday was the Grand Opening of Jester King Craft Brewing on Fitzhugh Rd; practically next door neighbor to Thirsty Planet.  Jester King seems to be fashioning themselves as a Dogfish Head type of venue.  The facility is very nice with an open air "barn" next to the brewery. The party started out great, they had food vendors, great entertainment, tours and several tasty brews to sample.  An hour into the event, a very cool, slightly ratty car club showed up. They had a super selection of darker beer styles and I really liked the Commercial Suicide (oak not whiskey barrel).  It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed a tour, but less than three hours into the party, the drink lines went on forever and when people drink too much they often won't wait their turn...sadly it was time to leave.

Next weekend it was off to Houston to celebrate my very dear friend Heather's birthday. Now living in Minnesota, she flew home to Houston so we could help her usher in the big 4-0!  Phil and I planned to pick her up at the airport and head to Saint Arnold, but we had to venture there alone.

Saint Arnold recently relocated from their original industrial strip complex to a huge facility in a refurbished old warehouse just north of downtown and I-10. Houston traffic, even on the weekend is never fun and parking for the facility took some patience too. They profess to be Texas' Oldest Craft Brewery and amazingly they have a small staff of less than 30 who do it all.  Tours are free, but if you want to sample the beer it is $7. For your money they provide you with a very nice 8oz tasting glass and three wooden tokens for samples. They open at 11am and when we arrived about 11:30am the huge beer hall was jam packed (the website had warned us) and super LOUD. Did all these people come here to tour?

Saint Arnold Beer Hall

People brought in their personal larger sized Saint Arnold barware and bartenders often poured a bit more then the 8oz promised. Root Beer was free...and delicious. I questioned if all these people were using it as a cheap place to drink? At 11:30, we could not find two seats. I was rather surprised to see how many people had brought kids and babies (and even though I was raised in Las Vegas I do not consider it a family friendly venue either). Many people brought lunch/pizza/munchies/chess/cards as the website had suggested.  I wish we would have too, but there was no place to sit but on the floor anyway.

I have not been a big fan of Saint Arnold beer and I hoped somehow visiting the source would be different. Their best chance to impress me was their Stout, it lacked any complexity. I took the noon tour as my wonderful husband escaped to the van for a nap. The young women leading the tour did a fabulous job and all the staff members were super friendly. I was thrilled to see the brewmaster tossing hops into the batch of IPA and having my picture taken next to the tie-dye Rolls Royce, they were absolutely the highlights here.

My kinda ride

See those beautiful kettles

My friend Heather lived in Texas most of her life and had never visited the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas! I learned of this terrible oversight shortly after she relocated to Minnesota and insisted we journey to Texas Beer Mecca for a tour on one of her upcoming visits. So what better way to spend a day of her birthday week visiting the place "every drop of Shiner Beer is made"? They have a really nice tasting room and an extensive gift shop.  Tours are free and come with three wooden tokens good for small tastes (I think it was about a six oz plastic glass).  My one complaint was they do not allow pictures.  The area around Shiner is a wonderful place to visit and we topped off the day visiting some of the area's beautiful Painted Churches.

When I moved from Michigan in November 2005 I had to leave behind my beloved Bell's Porter. Shortly thereafter Shiner Bock became my "go to" beer.  Shiner Bock is Texas beer...hands down. Bock is Spoetzl's primary beer.  I also enjoy their 97 Bohemian Black Lager and a couple of their small batches-Alt and Kosmos Reserve.  Unfortunately the small batches can only be acquired by buying a "Family Reunion" 6-pack which also includes one each of Bock, Blonde, Black and Hefeweizen.  They will switch out the Alt with something else down the line.  I asked during our visit and they are just small batches and have no future plans to market them in 6-packs. The variety pack is their marketing gimmick, so check the 6 beers before you buy, I have encountered 6-packs that were switched out and the Kosmos has always one of the missing.  They also produce a numbered anniversary beer coinciding with the number of years they have been brewing.  This year is number 102, a double wheat, I did not care for, but I loved the (97) Black and it was so popular they made it a regular.


Twenty nine days after Thirsty Planet, I stopped at Freetail Brewing on the northside of San Antonio on a Sunday evening.  I had been at an event for most of the day and was looking forward to a relaxing dinner and samples of the dark beers I had read about on their website. I like to sit at the bar, especially when I am alone like this time. Staff let me sit, apologized, then forgot me again without beer! Did she think I wouldn't notice the guy that walked up and got immediate service when I waited...and waited...and waited??

I ordered a beer sampler and was really looking forward to trying some of their dark small batches. They were out of three I wanted to try including the Lucinda Obscura (the black IPA) that I specifically wanted to taste. Maybe they should pay more attention to their website content. The Ancho Oscuro was flat and I do not like chili beer.  Of the five I tried the brown hbb660 was tolerable.

The food was terrible too. The Rueben panini was awful. They used a fake tasteless corned beef, perfectly round, like Oscar Mayer DeliFresh. The fruit salad they gave me was several days old and on the verge of spoiling. Price: $9, come on! There aren't many beers or breweries that I haven't liked, but this one rose right to the top. Bad service, short beer supply, awful food=I won't be returning!

Three out of five breweries were great, and the "not-so-great" two made the three great ones even better.  I may be a little bit of a beer snob, but hey, life is too short not to drink good beer. What I really need is to plan a hike to the top of Enchanted Rock so I can visit my very first Texas brewery-Fredericksburg Brewing Company for the umpteenth time ;)

Cheers!!