Darkside Fermentation are celebrating their second anniversary with a bittersweet farewell to their previous home, San Marcos’ Root Cellar, while celebrating the soon to come full production brewery.

Lots of good stuff on tap and bottle sales the day of the event.

From the horse’s mouth:

Beer Line-up For 2.11.12:

Mark of the Yeast:78666 : A GRUIT. Not a Quad or a Stout, A GRUIT. That means zeros hops in this batch. INstead, the bittering comes from my favorite legal, i mean local, psychotropics: Wormwood, Sage, Yarrow, and Elderberries. It aged in an Red Wine Barrel for 6 months then was blended with a similar, non-barrel batch. If Red Bull gives you wings, Mark of the Yeast gives you Pogo-sticks. 11% ABV. 660 Bottles and 1 Keg. $14/bottle

Darkside Red: A Flemish Red Sour aged in an Oak Barrel for 8 months on 30 Lbs of Sour Cherries. Dry, woody, bretty with a subtle cherry sweetness in the aftertaste. 6% ABV. 600 Bottles and 2 Kegs. $10/bottle

Golden Mean: A Strong Golden, a la Duvel, with a lambic twist. Nice sweettart/fruity notes from the wild yeast, and it packs a punch at 10% ABV. 150 Bottles and 1 Keg. $10/bottle

Sirius Dubbel: Darker than your usual “Dubbel”, This is nice malty, NON_LAMBIC, offering from Darkside. Great for cold wether, strong as usual. 8% ABV. 2 Kegs.

10% off the Purchase of a case (12 beers). I will be making 25 pre-assembled cases with 4 of each of the 3 bottle offerings. Only $120 (valued at $140). All these beers will age well as you wait out the Darkside Drought.

The idea is that we can drink up the 6 kegs that day, and sell all the bottles To Go. that way we dont have 100′s of empty bottles to deal with that night, and also for the mother earth.

Cool. Time to stock up on some DS bottles before the drought.

More details:

Where: Root Cellar Cafe & Brewery, 215 N LBJ DR, San Marcos
When: Saturday, Feb. 11, from 11AM to 7PM

So the folks over at SABC are pouring beers and ready to open the doors to the throngs of Austin beer lovers Saturday, February 11.

From the horse’s mouth:

uth Austin Brewing Company announces the Grand Opening party of Austin’s newest craft brewery. Saturday February 11, from 2-7 PM.

Please join us for authentic Austin music and the first opportunity to try our Belgian-style beer. Brewmaster Jordan Weeks will be on hand to give tours and talk about his specialty Belgian Style Golden Ale and Saison D’Austin. There will be souvenir tasting glasses and Tshirts for sale.

Live music is provided by The Everydudes. Yumé Burger, a new Austin food truck, will be on site vending freshly prepared meals. This will be a Green Event with 100% compostable recycling.

Spread the word, bring your 21-and-older friends, and come celebrate the craft beer resurgence in Austin!

South Austin Brewing Company is located at 415 East St Elmo, Unit 1D, Austin TX 78745, directly across from the Music Lab studios.

Sounds great.

More details:

What: South Austin Brewing Company Grand Opening
Where: 415 East Saint Elmo Road, Austin, TX 78745 (across from the Music Lab)
When: Saturday, Feb. 11, from 2PM to 7PM

Alright, so it’s not really snowy or cold out anymore, but that’s not going to keep us form celebrating the release of the Winter edition of the guide.

We’ll also be awarding the Best of 2011 Readers’ Poll winners at the party. So dress for the red carpet and bring your autograph book and camera.

No glasses this time, but there will be a keg of the Bourbon Barrel Night RYE-der collaboration we did with Hops & Grain on.

See you there!

Details:

Thursday, January 26

7pm

Draught House

FB EVENT 

Barber Shop are celebrating their first birthday Saturday the 28th with a selection of cask conditioned ales and special tappings including the OG Jester King Wytchmaker and a cask of Real Ale Coffee Porter.

Should be a great event and if you’re already in the area for the Jester King party early in the day you should make this your second stop.

Announced today on their Facebook page.

Das Wunderkind! Sour Saison labels have arrived. We can’t wait for you to try our first unpastuerized, unfiltered, bottle conditioned wild ale aged in oak barrels with native, Hill Country wild yeast and souring bacteria.

This is the one we’ve all been waiting for. If you were among the lucky folks to get some of this last fall at the Texas Craft Brewers Fest or one of the few locations it was on during Austin Beer Week, then you know this beer is the real deal.

“We’re pretty proud to now have bottled a wild ale from our barrel room,” said founder Jeffery Stuffings. Awesome. Looking forward to seeing this on shelves around town. No word on where to find it yet, but in light of the TABC lawsuit ruling, I’d expect to get word from the brewers themselves as soon as it’s available.

The brewers also announced new beer Mad Meg, a farmhouse provision ale.

From the horses’ mouth:

Also known as “Dulle Griet” or “Dull Gret”, Mad Meg is a peasant woman from Flemish folklore who leads an army of women to pillage hell. She’s famously depicted in Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s 1562 painting by the same name.
Mad Meg is simple in terms of ingredients with French pilsner malt, wheat, a touch of caramunich and acidulated malt, Czech Saaz hops and our farmhouse yeast. It is golden colored and quite strong at over 9% ABV (we can tell you the strength now!). The palate intertwines delicate farmhouse esters with earthy, spicy hops and clean malt flavors.
Mad Meg will be available beginning this week on draught at select locations around Austin, followed by a statewide bottle release once the beer has conditioned through re-fermentation in the bottle, label approval has been received, and the labels have been printed.

Alright. Exciting stuff. Go get it.

Additional issues regarding over-carbonation of Jester King‘s Commercial Suicide reported in their blog last month has resulted in a bottle recall. Retailers are urged to pull all bottles from shelves, and consumers should return un-opened bottles to their retailer or the brewery. More details in today’s press release posted on their blog:

A few weeks ago, we posted about an issue with Commercial Suicide bottles continuing to ferment beyond the projected finishing point, and becoming overcarbonated as a result. At the time, we did not feel that the issue warranted a full recall, but with extended cold storage, the bottle fermentation would cease and the excess CO2 that resulted from it would most likely get reabsorbed into the beer. Unfortunately, the fermentation has continued to a point where bottles may now be showing significant signs of leakage and may gush extensively upon opening. For this reason, we must ask that any retailer that still has Commercial Suicide on its shelves pull the product immediately. We would also advise any consumers who may be in possession of Commercial Suicide bottles to return them, either to the retailer from which they were purchased, or directly to the brewery. While we do not currently have any more Commercial Suicide to replace the overcarbonated batch, we are currently working on a Farmhouse version, which we hope to have ready sometime this spring. In the meantime, we will gladly replace any unopened bottles of Commercial Suicide that are returned to the brewery during our Saturday open hours with fresh bottles of one of our other beers of equal or higher retail value. Please accept our apology for this issue and for the inconvenience it has caused.

Not too long ago we spent an evening out at the Twisted X brewery with founders/brewers Shane Bordeau and Jim Sampson.

The guys were more than hospitable, giving us the grand tour and opening up their taps for some gratuitous “sampling”.

Jim and Shane are currently brewing on a 3 barrel brewhouse in Cedar Park. They are producing up six styles at any given point and can be found at about five locations. When we were there they had the Twisted X Mexican Style Lager, Fuego Jalapeno Lager, Senor Viejo Black Imperial Lager Aged in Tequila Barrels, and the Siesta Prickly Pear Lager.

All the brews were excellent, but the Fuego and Senor Viejo probably saw more time in our glasses than the others. The Fuego has an unmistakable pepper character but is dialed in so you get the flavor and heat, but not so much you have to stop at one. The Senor Viejo is a nice take on the barrel aging phenomenon that no brewery can do without these days. It’s big, rich, and has a nice sweet roasty flavor complimented by the tequila barrel.

Twisted X are still technically in the “pilot” phase, and are still raising funds to build out a larger 30 barrel brewhouse as soon as late 2011. They hope to make enough beer to supply all of Texas. They are currently walking the fine line of marketing, but not so much they can’t keep up with demand.

Enough from me, watch the video.

We’re drinking the Fuego and Senor Viejo in the video. So if you can, crack open a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

Wow, its been a big year for beer in Austin. With three new breweries opening their doors, another two right on the cusp, rumors and sightings of multiple new brewpubs, and also a good return of medals from the Great American Beer Fest, Austin truly is in the midst of a beer boom.

And being the suckers we are for listing and comparing, we decided to put together our first ever “Best of” readers’ poll.

So take a few minutes (there are only 10 categories) to fill it out and we’ll print the results in the upcoming Winter issue of the guide.

Click HERE to take the Best of 2011 Readers’ Poll! 

Polling closes on December 31st.

Cheers!

Alright. We’re teaming up with Google Places on this one. 

It’s pretty simple. You fill out this form, then you go and review/rate as many breweries or brewpubs as you can, Google will judge them and award points, the users with the most points wins a seat on an Austin Brew Bus tour to a handful of Austin’s fine breweries.

Winners will be notified on December 13th, and on Saturday, December 17th 20 lucky Googlers will ride on a bus with some of us BTA jerks to hit up some breweries. Fun times.

OK. Get to it and good luck.

Disc golf and beer are MFO. And I guess so are celebrities and charity events.

And SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11 you can get your fill of both out at Twin Parks Country Club in Dripping Springs.

I beleive the idea is that the disc golf-local beer loving public will be paired up with the disc golf-local beer making folks and play four to a hole. Like a celebrity golf tournament. “I hate that Bob Barker!”

And judging by the sponsor list, it’s pretty safe to assume beverages will be provided.

More info here on the Facebooks.