I had the hardest time spelling “episode” as I typed out the title.

Weird.

Come one come all to our 20TH episode (took me three times to spell it this time too!) of Over a Pint, the beer “vlog” show featuring  some guy drinking beers, asking questions, and making things awkward with your favorite ATX beer influencers.

Yup. This is our score episode (as in four score and…), and boy did we score.

Brian and Tammy Smittle of Thirsty Brewing Co had us out to drink some beers and shoot some video.

We had the honor of being their very first press outing. Although, we were scooped by that other most popular beer personality at the Statesman. Whatever. It’s not a contest. (I actually met Patrick for the first time this past weekend at the Beer Connoisseur party at Independence, and he’s a great guy).

Ok, that rabbit’s been chased. Back to Thirsty Planet.

Brian and Tammy successfully evaded the watchful eye of the internet and ATX beer scene for nearly two years as they cleverly hatched their plan for a 30 barrel production brewery out on 290 W (they are literally neighbors to Jester King).

At the time of publishing, Brian suspects he should be brewing beer in about two or three weeks and it should be filling pints around town in about six. Yes, that’s correct; there should be new local ATX beers on draft in merely a month and a half. *shock face*

Thirsty Planet plan on debuting three styles: Amber, wheat, and IPA. Brian has been a pro brewer for various brewpubs since 1993 (before many of us online beer nerds could even drink beer). He began as a brewer in Vail, CO, then refined his craft in multiple brewpubs in OK. As his brewpub empire expanded, he found himself more often encouraging wait staff to up-sell Pizza Shooters, Shrimp Poppers, or Extreme Fajitas than donning his rubber boots and crawling into kettles to clean out spent grains. As a result, Brian and Tammy moved to Austin in 2008 to pursue their dreams of owning and operating a full production brewery.

Currently, they own a very large brewery with room to expand into bottling very soon. And besides the first three beers, Brian plans to utilize their large and hostpitable tasting room as a laboratory for various experimental brews he plans to churn out on his 5 barrel pilot system. He mentioned trying some more exotic styles including smoked porters, double IPAs, fruit beers, beers with brettanomyces, and various local ingredients. He hopes to cultivate a brewpub type atmosphere at the tasting room to share beers and receive feedback. In addition to the large tasting room, they plan to develop an outside bier garten for outside drinking, local music, and cyclist recouping (this place will be an excellent biking destination). Brian mentioned he’d like to keep the tasting room open multiple times a week to encourage more of a brewer/drinker relationship. I’m OK with this.

Brian asked me to encourage folks to sign up for the newsletter for more info. Also, check out their site for the best info. Don’t trust us; we’re just in it for the free beer and popularity.

Wow. Enough with the writing, more with the video.

We’re drinking the Real Ale PhoeniXX Double ESB (Tammy has a rootbeer, I think. She’s preggers). So if you’re able, crack open a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

[Hmm. So I forgot to hold the mic up to my mouth as I spoke, so you can't really hear everything I'm saying so well. We'll have a better mic soon.]

Audio

Direct link to the mp3 HERE

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[Also, Shawn couldn't make it out for this one, my camera battery was dead, and all these images are from my iPhone... sorry. Shawn got a fancy new camera so we'll have better images in the future...]

Welcome welcome to another episode of Over a Pint. For number 19 we met up with Jason Armstrong, the Southern Central US Stone Brewing Rep.

We drank some beers with Jason up at Billy’s on Burnet on Fat Tuesday. It was cold, but not as noisy outside. Also sort of dark.

Jason had a lot to say. I’ll just put it in bullet points:

• We should soon see Stone’s Sublimely Self Righteous bottles in TX
• Texas is the number two consumer of Stone in the nation second to California
• Stone has recently expanded their brewery to accommodate more collaboration and one off brews
• He was in town on his way up to the Houston Flying Saucer/Petrol Station Stone Vertical tapping
• He said that things are in the works for an Austin collaborative Stone vault tapping event
• 2010 Stone Old Guardian barley wine was recently released and TX got three kegs
• Stone plans to expand their firkin program (with Draught House possibly getting Stone Imperial Russian Stout)

Wow. Lots of exciting stuff for TX Stone drinkers. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the local collaboration tapping, and god’s speed to the Sublimely Self Righteous hitting shelves soon.

Big thanks to Jason for hanging out with us and sharing beers and burgers (I went wt the Cobra!) Hopefully we’ll see him again soon for an ATX Stone tapping event (bring some Cali-Belgique!)

Jason and I are drinking Stone IPA in the video, so if you can, crack open a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

Audio

Direct link to the mp3 HERE
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Welcome to Over a Pint episode 17. We recently got a chance to sit down with Steven Yarak, Jeff Young, and Karrine Karen Thornblom of Black Star Co-op.

We talked for a while. Over 15 minutes. We posted the first ten minutes here. We’ll post the B Side of the interview later this week (they take about 2 hours do with the importing and the editing and compressing and uploading and such.)

Steve, Jeff, and Karrine were excellent hosts and shared some nice beers with us as we discussed the history of the world’s first cooperatively owned brew pub, a little bit of their mission, membership perks, their beers (and why we can’t try them yet), their food, their new location and them getting LEED certified.

Jeff elaborates on the beers and talks a bit about the Infinity series, barrel aging and made some math jokes, too (I get it, they always CONVERGE on deliciousness!)

Hmm. So because the video was so long and we had to cut it up we see Karrine in the first video, but she doesn’t really talk much until the second… so just be patient. She is the buildout manager and is heading up the LEED certification push. What she has to say is interesting, just said in odd time increments that do not fit with the other content so well.

We shot this on an early Sunday afternoon. Actually, it was the Sunday after the Flying Saucer 2nd anniversary party. It takes us a bit to get in the swing of things (at least for me.)

We’re drinking the Delirium Noël and then move onto the Allagash Interlude (did I mention we went for 15 minutes?) So if you can, crack open a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

Direct link to the mp3 HERE

Much thanks to Sean for fancy-ing up the audio!

So we’re going to start putting up the audio from the Over a Pint sessions, you know, for all you guys who have dogs to walk or co-workers to ignore or traffic to zone out in.

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Last week JIB and went out to Draught House to meet the good folks fromNew Belgium and try some of those new Ranger IPAs. YUM.

Lauren Salazar (wife to Eric or Eric’s Ale), NB Sensory Specialist, was there with the rest of the local NB crew to meet and greet and pass out pints of the Ranger. She was kind enough to go on camera with us.

Lauren talked up the Ranger, an American style IPA with 70 IBUs and 6.5 ABV hopped with “tons and tons and tons…” of Cascade, Chinook, and Simcoe, and also shed some light on the name history (hint- it has nothing to do with that stupidbaseball team in Arlington or Chuck Norris.) The Ranger was good. Nice and hoppy, well balanced, very drinkable. Go get it.

She also gets into describing her role at New Belgium as a sensory specialist. Basically, she can take someone who “likes beer” and five years later have them identifying off flavors and specific chemical compounds and scale on an intensity scale and other stuff that is above my pay grade (I don’t get paid anything for this.) Simply, she keeps your favorite New Belgium beers tasting the way they should across the board.

Oh, and she told us they are planning a Berliner weiss and a wet dry hopped sour ale, among other beers, for the Lips of Faith series. Wait, what? Wow. Those sound amazing. More info in the video about the Berliner Weiss, unfortunately we ran out of time before we could get much more about the wet dry hopped sour.

At the 2:36 mark you can see the guys in the background getting into a short game of charades, or he’s describing that Youtube video where the deer attacks the hunter. I’ve had that conversation at the Draught House before. I dunno.

Much thanks to Josh at Draught House and Lauren and the New Belgium crew for talking to us and sharing some beers.

For our sweet sixteenth OAP, we’re both drinking the Ranger, so if you can crack open a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

Direct link to the mp3 HERE

Much thanks to Sean for fancy-ing up the audio!

Welcome welcome to our 18th Over a Pint. This one was shared with Mr. Brian Peters of Live Oak, Bitter End, and currently, Uncle Billy’s fame.

Brian had us out a week or so ago to share some beers and talk shop. We showed up just as he and brewing assistant Amos Lowe were finishing up a batch of the Back 40 Blonde. Seeing the two of them work in tandem, moving hot liquids, creating cool liquids, turning wheels, checking tanks, all the while skillfully maneuvering around their 10 barrel brewhouse made my beer that afternoon taste all the more “craft.”

Brian told us that they pumped out 800 barrels last year and expect to produce 1,200 barrels this year, thanks to the newly opened parking lot. When Uncle Billy’s Brew and Que came on the scene in 2006, they were slinging more beers than they could barely produce.

“It was fun selling so much beer you can’t keep up,” commented Brian.

The parking lot went away in June, 2007(?- neither of us could remember for sure), and the beer production dropped. Brian fully expects it to pick back up as the brewpub opened their new parking garage just north of the location last week (if we were on the ball, we’d had gone out and taken some pictures… we were there in spirit.)

Brain just put on the Parking Lot Pilsner and he said he the Hell In Keller (yeah, the one that won that medal) should be on soon, too. On the day we went out, we had the Axe Handle Pale (which I kept calling the Buried Hatchet), the [Ctrl] [Alt] [Delete], the Resonator 2X IPA, and the barrel aged Ruby Red (my favorite).

The Axe Handle is on year-round, but I’m not sure if the other rotating beers are still on tap. If so, go get them. Brian said he made the Alt hoppier than the style is, but I appreciate that. The Resonator is a solid 2X IPA, nicely hopped with a good malt balance. And the Ruby Red with the wild yeast added in the barrel is, in my opinion, outstanding- maybe one of the best local brewpub offerings I’ve had in a while.

I feel I would be doing our readers (I’m pretty sure I can use the plural here) a disservice if I don’t address all the recent rumors surrounding Uncle Billy’s concerning a second location and a canning line. Brian could not comment on it, so I used my other source (is Twitter a source now?) and was told “As for now, we can’t confirm or deny it…we’ll let you know when we have official details and information.”

So, there you have it. Still/just rumors. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. But seriously, shouldn’t we already be more than happy just to have the GABF medal winning Uncle Billy’s in our town? YES!

We’re drinking the Axe Handle Pale, Resonator 2X IPA, and [Ctrl] [Alt] [Delete] in the video, so if you can prepare yourself with a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

Audio

Direct link to the mp3 HERE
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