Saturday,  March 20 – Kevin Brand & Company @ (512) Brewing rolled up the overhead door for their Spring Open House.

I hope you were there. Because it was good.

Good in all the ways we’ve  come to expect from these guys:

Great Beer. We were reintroduced to the Alt, the spring seasonal offering as well as all the other great (512) staples.  And with three free tastes with the option of buying a $5 logo pint to maximize the volume of those tastes, who could resist?

More about the Alt from the (512) website:

(512) ALT is a German-style amber ale that is fermented cooler than typical ales and cold conditioned like a lager. ALT means “old” in German and refers to a beer style made using ale yeast after many German brewers had switched to newly discovered lager yeast. This ale has a very smooth, yet pronounced, hop bitterness with a malty backbone and a characteristic German yeast character. Made with 98% Organic 2-row and Munch malts and US noble hops.

Great Atmosphere. There was a band, indoor and outdoor pouring stations, and an art show a few warehouses down.  And even though Bill Murray wasn’t serving my pint, this was a must on my SXSW agenda. I’m sure for many it served as a much needed respite from the downtown scene.

An inside look. Of course with any open house its always a perk to see whats going on within the brewery.  We got to see the new fermenting tanks (even though some got an earlier look) and the new offices built up above the cooler and grain room.  And besides slinging a few beers themselves you can always catch Kevin or Nate giving tours, answering questions or chatting with local fanboys.

All in all, this was just a great event. No frills. Just a great time enjoying some of our favorite local brews.  A big thanks to everyone at (512) for opening the doors to the local beer community once again. Cheers guys!

Now make sure to get out and get some of the Alt while its on tap around town…

And the winner of the Opal Divine’s Valentine’s Beer Dinner Beer My Valentine contest is…………………………………….

JANICE!

With her holiday themed Hefe-weissValentine, she beat out Carl’s rotating photo collage 81 votes to 67.

Janice, enjoy your Opal Divine’s Valentine’s Beer Dinner for two.

And Carl, since you ran such a great race, Michael over at Opal Divine’s has thrown in two great Opal Divine’s T-shirts for you and your Valentine. So, you know, you don’t get a swanky beer dinner, but you get some sweet ass T-shirts. Still romantic. It’ll be like the T-shirts your aunt brings back from all the places you’ve never been.

Great contest everybody!

Thanks much to Opal Divine’s for the generous prizes and to our contestants and everyone who voted or died.

If you don’t already have those big V-day plans nailed down, maybe hit up Opal’s for the beer dinner. It looks pretty nice.

Cheers!

Last month we went on our second bike pub crawl. We rode, we drank, and then we repeated. Several times.

Here’s some photos from the night.

If you think this might be some action you wanna get in on, keep checkin the site and we’ll post info about another one soon (hopefully at a time when just the thought of biking won’t make us cold…)

Muchos Gracias to Crown&Anchor, Draught House, Flying Saucer, and Billy’s on Burnet for fueling us with a wide variety of great brews all evening. And also a big thanks to ATXBS.com for getting the word out (and thus supplying a good percentage of the riders)

Thanks to everyone who came out, we’ve got another one up our sleeve soon.

Here are the entries from the Beer My Valentine contest.

Vote for your favorite in the comments section, the Beer My Valentine with the most comment votes by midnight Thursday wins the Opal Divine’s Valentine’s Dinner.

1. Sandra Fabian

2.  Mike

I love you Arrogant Bastard and you too Fireman’s 4. I pine for you Boont, but Fat Tire, I want you more. I will never defile with a weiser or natty light. Because cheating on you, dear friends, would never be right.

3. Carl Knutson

Click HERE to see it.

4. Janice Veteran

Sung to O-Tanunbaum

Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.
Oh Fruit-ty beer, yet cloud-dy beer,
How much I real-ly love you.

With-in your tang-y cit-trus taste,
There-’s not a sing-gle drop to waste.
No Orange slice
Nor made with rice,
Unfiltered is my love for thee
Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.

Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.
With your floral effer-vess
You really are the besss-t
Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.

Oh hefe-weiss, oh hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you
I tell my weight watcher friends to say
I was tak-ing my fiber drink today
Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.

Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.
With your fruit-ty a-rom-a
and fluffy head of foam,
I have to stop, to make it home.
Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.

Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.
My great friends cheer “Gemutlich Keit”
With this beer, we cheer delight,
Oh Hefe-weiss, oh Hefe-weiss
How much I real-ly love you.

So Mike over at Opal Divine’s gave us a $65 Valentine’s Beer Dinner for two to giveaway.

Featuring French Oak Barrel Aged Real Ale Anniversary Ale, (512) IPA or Independence Amber, and Bourbon Barrel aged (512) Double Pecan Porter in addition to some delicious courses, it looks pretty swanky.

1. Create a “Beer My Valentine” card, poem, song, video, photograph, etc, that lets beer know just how much it means to you.
2. Submit your creations to us and we’ll post your expressions of undying love on our site for everyone to vote on.
3. Rally the troops, call up all your owed favors, use your powers of social influence for good not evil and get people to vote for you.
4. The “Beer My Valentine” with the most votes wins.

You’ve got till 10:59 pm Sunday, Feb 7th to submit links to your “Beer My Valentine” in the form below.

Voting will commence Monday, Feb 8th, we will tally up the votes Thursday the 11th at 11:59 pm and announce the winner on Friday, Feb 12th.

The dinner is good for Feb 13th or 14th ONLY.

Design by the Design Shaman.

For the $25 Draught House gift card, our FIRST PLACE photo was taken by Andrew Pogue.

And coming in at a close SECOND PLACE and winner of the Austin Homebrew logo pint glass and wall mounted bottle opener is Austin Pixel’s literal interpretation of “Beer Porn.”

Thanks to Draught House and Austin Homebrew and everyone who participated.

We got a lot of great beer porn (at one point we had to try not to judge solely on what made us thirsty) and had a very hard time choosing the winners.

You’re all winners in our book… except for all of you who didn’t play.

Here are a few of our other favorites.

By Aaron C.

By Josh S.

By John C.

By Sarah S.

[Sarah's was my wife's favorite]

Thanks again to everyone who participated. Watch out, we have a good contest coming up later this week.

Cheers.

Ok. Here’s the rundown.

You have till Sunday, January 31st to submit your steamiest, most succulent, mouth watering, sexy, tantalizing, </thesaurus> etc., beer photographs.*
They have to be taken at the Draught House with recognizable Draught House scenery as part or in the background of the photograph.
Put them online and send us a link in the form bellow.

Be creative, but not actually pornographic.

We’ll pick two winners and post those with all our favorites on the site.
First place=$25 DH gift card
Second place=Austin Homebrew Supply logo pint glass and a “Make Your Own Damn Beer” wall mounted bottle opener

*do not send any actual pornographic photos.

Thanks to Josh for the custom contest poster.

Come one, come all.

Bring ID, $$$, etc,.

Fingers crossed for some good weather.

*MEET AT CROWN & ANCHOR AT 4 PM. WE WILL DEPART FROM THERE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF 4:45 PM*

And the winners are…

Ian Marks 1st Place- A Billy’s on Burnet $15 Gift Card Good for Beer/Food

Matthew J Reid 2nd Place- A super plush Billy’s on Burnet T-shirt

Josh McGonigle 3rd Place- A deluxe Billy’s on Burnet Koozie

Congrats, guys!

Much thanks to Billy’s on Burnet for donating the stuff and thanks to everyone who participated.

If you can’t tell from the image, the ingredients on the COBRA are grilled jalapenos, bacon, cheddar, chipotle mayo, lettuce, tomato, and onion.

We’ll do another one soon.

Cheers!

It’s simple. You have three (3) days to correctly submit a list of all the fixin’s on Billy’s new burger, the COBRA.

We will take all the correct entries and pick three randomly. Maybe we’ll tape each to the neck of a live cobra and put all of them in a pit, and make them fight, and the last three slithering win. Or we may just put them in a hat and draw them… depends on whether we can get enough cobras in time to announce the winners by Friday.

Fair enough, yeah?

The COBRA is so new and venomous* that the fixin’s aren’t even on the web-menu yet. Also, no calling. You have to go into Billy’s on Burnet.

Submission deadline is Thursday at midnight. All entries after that will turn into pumpkins. Winners will be announced Friday.

1st Place- A Billy’s on Burnet $15 Gift Card Good for Beer/Food

2nd Place- A super plush Billy’s on Burnet T-shirt

3rd Place- A deluxe Billy’s on Burnet Koozie

*The COBRA burger is not venomous. Cobra snake is.