Black Star Co-op Brick and Mortar Reveal
Early November, the fine folks at Black Star Co-op held a brick and mortar location reveal. It was great.
The ideas of Steve Yarak, Jeff Young, and a handful of other entrepreneurial, idealistic, passionate beer drinkers envisioned in a back yard behind Monkey Wrench on North Loop three years ago are finally coming to fruition at the Midtown Commons center in Crestview.
Currently, the plans are to open the doors of “the world’s first co-operatively owned and worker self-managed brewpub” in Summer 2010. The brick and mortar location, a detail of the co-op that has been widely speculated on, is located in an urban development much like the Triangle or a slew of those other living/shopping areas, except that this one is connected to one of the coveted Metro stations. Let’s keep our fingers crossed it will be running sometime while drinking beer is still fashionable (aka, I don’t have dumb kids keeping me from staying out all hours of the night knocking back cold ones!)
Steve rapt our collective attention for ten minutes plus (our video cuts at 10:40~ in order to get it on YouTube) spilling numerous beans to the crowd of member owners, media, and generally curious. He spelled out the perks of being a member owner; free beer on your membership birthday, a future year end tab discount, and limited invites to food and beer pairings and tasting events.
He also explained some of the values Black Star will ascribe to, including keeping and advocating other local beer on their taps, creating a no tip atmosphere and providing their workers with livable wages (yay!) He also mentioned that the brewpub would keep an extensive bottle library. All this is in the video.
The speeches and fanfare were followed by beer (I had the Live Oak Primus- yum) and tours of the brick and mortar space. Chefs Michael Holland and Johnny Livesay explained how the brewpub will serve traditional English pubfare with a Texas emphasis (it was so hard to resist saying “with a Texas twist”. Gah I hate myself for almost going there). They also mentioned the food would compliment and be influenced by the beers. I like this. The lead architect (I’m punching myself in the neck for not taking notes on the tour…) [MATHEW NESBITT is his name. Thanks, Jeff!] explained the layout of the building. I’m most excited about the large outdoor seating area. They also made it a priority to focus the bar at the entrance and display the brewing tanks in a corner with windows to be seen from the street.
Finally, Brewer Jeff Young got to what everybody was there for, the Black Star Co-op beers. He explained that there would be a Rational and Irrational series, a clever way of separating the drinkablility beers from the nerd beers. From the descriptions on the page, Young’s beers seem nicely diverse and ambitious. Exactly what I like from a brew pub. They know the local staples will cover the basic style bases, so they are free to experiment. The Vulcan rye ale, Waterloo sour wheat, and Cul Sec spiced beer all sound pretty yummy. Bummer I have to wait till Summer 2010 to try.
All in all, it was a great event and we’re greatly anticipating having a place with such potential in that part of central/north Austin.
Cheers!
