If you went to ONE or TWO, then you know the (512) guys can throw some good parties.

From the horses’ mouth:

Come taste the NEW (512) THREE
Belgian Style Tripel
SAT, OCT 8th – 1-5pm

Get two free tastes
Buy a new Limited Edition
(512) 3rd Anniversary Glass
for $10 and we’ll use your new glass as the tasting glass
Cash and checks only please
Bring one non perishable items to benefit Bastrop county fire victims and receive one additional free beer ticket.We will be projecting the TEXAS/OU Game

PARKING – PLEASE CARPOOL AND DESIGNATE A DRIVER!!! – PARKING
Please try and park in lots near the brewery before parking in the neighborhood across from the brewery. Suggested lots: Bender Bar (turn north just east of the brewery on Radam - EAT THERE AFTERWARDS! St John’s Lutheran Church (easiest access is from East bound Ben White Access Road)  We will also be parking cars perpendicular to Radam in the grassy area near the entrance (see parking attendant).  Please do not park illegally in the neighborhood, as cars will be TOWED Please observe our neighbor’s parking signs (this makes up 4 or 5 spots in total)

TAKE THE BUS!
Ride Capital Metro to the SOUTH CONGRESS TRANSIT CENTER and walk west on Radam
http://www.capmetro.org/planner/

Children are welcome, but they must be supervised at all times.

Yeah. Sounds great. Looking forward to the party and the THREE.

So I did the laziest of reporting and trolled the Beeradvocate forums for this one.

According to a Beeradvocate handle that claims to be (512) head brewer, Nate Seale, the third anniversary party has been postponed to October 8th, due to heat and brewery expansion.

Sounds legit, but I’d file this under “semi-official”.

Also, via the Beeradvocate news network (southwest forum), the THREE will be a tripel. Alright.

So let’s not hold our breath until we get a formal announcement, although this was an easy freebie post for a Monday.

Pierre Celis at (512) Brewing by Rodolfo Gonzalez, Austin American Statesman, courtesy of (512) Brewing

You would have to be living under a rock if you’ve not heard that sad news that world-renowned Pierre Celis passed away last weekend at the age of 86. Pierre had followed in his father’s footsteps for the first half of his life, as a milkman. After the closure of the Brouwerij Tomsin in his village of Hoegaarden,  Pierre became determined to bring the brewing of Witbier back in 1966.  Much of the knowledge that Pierre gained in the dairy trade turned out to be useful in his brewing practices of Hoegaarden classics including the Hoegaarden Grand Cru and White.

I’ll never forget the historic night that I met Pierre Celis — I was working at the historic Ale House in Houston, a British pub and restaurant that featured over 130 beers in bottle and draft.

It was October 17, 1989, at a wholesalers beer conference in downtown Houston. I went with my boyfriend who not only worked with me at the Ale House, but was a homebrewer with a plan to open his own brewpub whenever the Texas Legislature would get around to legalizing brewpubs in Texas. We were invited to visit a hospitality suite with C.R. Goodman Distributing as well as other representatives from the beer industry including three generations of the Young Brewery dynasty. At the time,  C.R. Goodman had an association with Manneken-Brussels Imports, and was the Texas distributor of Hoegaarden. I was already a fan of the White, and was pleased that the infamous Verboden Vrucht (Forbidden Fruit) was available at the intimate gathering — due to the Renaissance nudes on the label, Forbidden Fruit was not approved for distribution in Texas. At 8.5 ABV it was my first intoxicating taste of a Belgian Dark Strong Ale.

I was introduced to Pierre — the first professional brewer I’d ever met — and we conversed in French since he spoke very little English and I couldn’t speak a lick of Flemish. He mentioned that C.R. Goodman was encouraging him to open a brewery in Texas. The next year, Celis Brewery came to fruition in Austin.

On a side note,  I thought it a bit rude that during the hospitality event the youngest Young was watching television intently with Pierre as a special guest in the room.  I thought that he was watching a sports event until I approached him and saw that he was watching a warehouse fire in San Francisco.  The major earthquake of 1989 that brought the World Series to a halt also created a blaze in the warehouse district. With his head buried in his hands, he stated, “we JUST received a container there with a major shipment”. To which his grandfather, John Allen Young — great-great-grandson of the firm’s founder, and an advocate of  ‘real ale’ — looked at his son and grandson and replied, “That’s the business”.

I didn’t see Pierre Celis again until sometime in 1994, at an event at the Celis Brewery in Austin, but he remembered our meeting as well and the circumstances of that night. I’m so glad that Pierre whole-heartedly supported and enjoyed (512) Wit, my favorite of t (512) Brewing’s lineup. Were it not for Pierre Celis, I would never have discovered my favorite summer beer. I’ll raise my next pint of Wit to the brewer who revived witbier and made it Immortal.

Get them at these places:

Whole Foods
Whip In
Spec’s Liquors
Twin Liquors – bee cave/Hancock and a few others

Happy hunting.

Wow. Big news from (512) Brewing guys. Souring the bruin.

This kind of slipped under the radar wt all the Saint Arnold DR10 madness.

From the horse’s mouth:

So, in the spirit of half-cockedness, we decided to do some experimenting of our own. We bought a few barrels, threw some wild critters in and crossed our fingers. Actually it was a little more systematic than that. Earlier this month we became the proud owners of 4 brand new American Oak barrels made by World Cooperage. For those of you who’ve never seen a fresh oak barrel, it’s a work of art. Oak barrels make ideal vessels for sour beer because of the porosity of the wood. Essentially, once a barrel is inoculated with bacteria or wild yeast, it’s reached the point of no return and will inoculate anything else that’s put into the barrel (much to the dismay of the world’s winemakers). This works perfectly for us, as it will allow us to maintain a constant and consistent source of bacteria.

…

On inoculation day we sprayed the insides of each barrel with a strain of Brettanomyces that we’ve been culturing in-house for over 10 months. We then added a dose of Pediococcus (aka Satanobacter) to each barrel and finished off the cocktail by filling the barrels with freshly fermented (512) BRUIN. This beer is our recently released fall seasonal Double Brown Ale. We feel the malt character of the Bruin will work well with the sourness provided by the bacteria and yeast. At least, we hope it will. The beautiful thing about an experiment like this is that there’s a fair amount of mystery involved. Nothing like brewing sour beer to take you back to the days of “Relax, don’t worry. Have a homebrew.” After filling the barrels we did as Dr. Papazian prescribes, and will now let the beer age for months. We can’t yet provide an E.T.A. for this experiment. As we mentioned, souring microbes are interesting creatures, and simply can’t be held to a timeline. However, look forward to some interesting experimental sours coming out sometime in the (somewhat) near future.

For the whole essay on souring and how and why check out their Facebook post.

Alright (512), way to continue to blaze the trail locally. Can’t wait to try some of the soured Bruin in the (somewhat) near future.

Make room on your Austin Beer Week schedule and come join us at Billy’s on Burnet this Thursday at 7 for a cask of (512) Bruin dry hopped wt Simcoe.

We’ll be there (like that’s a draw…) along wt some of the (512) brewers. Buy the beer keep the (512) glass.

Should be a great time.

See you there.

Shit yeah.

Possibly the only thing better than a megalomaniac rapper claiming to replace a chunk of his teeth with diamonds is Austin Beer Week.

Or maybe just imaging this guy chewing his food with the same items most of us chumps use to vow our lives to our loved ones with is just a little bit better.

Tomato, tomato.

Hopefully by now you’ve heard of Austin Beer Week. It’s a week long celebration of beer in Austin. Lots of lots of local events. Enough stuff to last us a couple months during regular season. Shit, half a year. Putting this fanboy into over time.

We’re doing a bike pub crawl wt this jerk, and then we have a special (512) cask tapping event at Billy’s on Burnet on Thursday. I heard it could be a dry hopped cask of the Bruin or possibly the TWO. Who knows. We’ll post more as we find out.

So those are the BEST events of the whole week.

In addition to our fantastic events there is a whole lot going on. All the area brewpubs will be serving a similarly brewed IPA with different varieties of hops per brew pub. It’s called the Hop School IPA and there is a contest going to name the different hop styles used in each one.

Horse’s mouth:

HOP SCHOOL IPA
Total IBUs 60 = measure of bitterness in relation to International Bittering Units scale
O.G. 16 P (1.064) = original gravity
F.G. 3 P (1.012) = final gravity; will vary by brewery
Ave. ABV 6.9% = alcohol by volume
Yeast: Standard Clean American
Base malt 94%
Crystal 20 L malt 6% = a touch of color and sweetness. (think Stone Ruination)
Bittering Hop: Apollo
Boil Time: 60 min. for about 50 IBUs
**FLAVOR HOP: CAN YOU ID THIS HOP VARIETY?
Boil Time: 10 min. for 10 IBUs
** – Used through to the end to ensure the majority of the hop character of the beer is from the house hop. Aroma hop (no boil time) may have been the same ‘house’ hop or not, and some brewpubs may have dry hopped in fermentor.

There will be a bus touring the brewpubs to taste different varieties of this beer. Sounds fun.

Other events that I (in my own opinion) am excited about:

[we're allowed to be subjective cause we're just a stupid blog...]

• Saint Arnold will have a Week-Long Scavenger Hunt
• Draught House will host the first annual Beer Olympics (rumor has it the Real Ale crew are out for blood)
• Black Star Brewery tour
• Jester King meet and greet at Draught House
• Saint Arnold Divine Reserve #1-9 vertical tasting wt Brewer Brock Wagner at Ginger Man
• Independence Breweries dinner at McCormick and Smick’s
• Special screening of Inglorious Basterds wt Live Oak beers at Alamo South Lamar
• New brewers meet and greet at Draught House
• Acoustic Night at the Jester King Beer Hall
• Black Star Co-op Beer Flavor Analysis – A Blind Tasting
• Dogfish Head Bitches Brew Tapping at Ginger Man
• Craft Cheese Meets Craft Beer: Independence Tasting with Antonelli’s Cheese
• Ultimate Brewery & Brewpub Tour
• Last call beer and food pairing events at the High Ball
• Real Ale tapping multiple casks and kegs of the Mysterium Verum beers and other tasty seasonal refreshments
• Lots more great stuff I didn’t mention. Check them all out here

I would call in late for work the next morning after any of these events (just kidding, Raghu…)

So everyone put on your going out pants and lets all celebrate good beer and Austin next week.

See you out there! Cheers!

(512) Brewing Co celebrate the terrible twos with an exquisite double IPA.

Oh happy day.

We went out to the brewery the other day to kick the tires and sample some of Mr. Brand’s new wares.

The beer’s good. Nice and hoppy, but not over hoppy. Balanced, but definitely with a hop emphasis. It’s 9% abv, but you couldn’t tell till you stood up after drinking a few.

Here’re my notes from Nate:

• Brewed in mid July (14th, 15th, and 16th)
• About 9% abv wt 11 different editions of hops.
• Whole leaf simcoe added in cask
• Mash hopped with simcoe
• First wort hopped with nugget
• Grant hopped with simcoe
• Magnum and ahtanum also present
• Magnum and nugget most prominate
• Lower crystal portion than standard (512) IPA for more hops and less balance
• They thought about doing something different than a Belgian and were more excited about the idea of a double IPA
• Started tooling around with recipes and such in April

It’s good stuff and will have its official debut this coming Saturday at the brewery second anniversary open house from 2-5pm.

More info here.

Also, Kevin mentioned that if you plan on hitting up the brewery he’d like everyone to try and cut his neighbors some slack and park in the nearby lots. I know Bender bar and St. Lutheran’s church both have lots and are friendly to (512) visitors.

Now, to the new beer news.

Drum roll…………

After having a few 4oz samplings of the TWO and shooting the shit wt Nate, Kevin and Spencer, Nate asked us if we wanted to try something new… yes, we would.

They have a limited amount of the ONE.2 that has been aged in brandy barrels. And it’s pretty cussing delicious. The brandy leaves a mighty “impression” on the strong belgian, but it’s a robust enough beer from the start that it holds its own against the liquor. Smooth and rich, the Brandy Barrel Aged ONE.2 (the working title) will be released on tap in mid September between the TWO and the Bruin.

So there’s something to definitely look forward too.

Also, Nate confirmed that have a whiskey barrel holding some wit in it. He said this one is just an experiment, but if it goes well they may make it a release. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

Wow, lots of (512) Brewing news. Looking forward to the open house this weekend. Kevin said it should be running pretty smooth with hopefully limited waits and lots of shade. See our rundown of the event last year here.

[photo credit: Little Beard's iPhone]

June 26th, besides the Real Ale Anniversary party (which I truly regret missing this), witnessed the Great Austin Beer Festival.

We were there loud and proud. See us in the pic above sporting our new rasterized banner (no, it’s not a pixilated image. It’s on purpose… IDIOT!)

As a disclaimer, I should mention that we were an event sponsor and appreciate the GATXBF guys including us.

GATXBF had a lot going on. 1,600 drinkers last I heard, ~40 breweries, tons of beer (we roughly counted 80 cases left over after!), and a good(ish) time for all. Plus nice local representation from Independence, (512), Real Ale, Saint Arnold, and Live Oak (who’s table was manned by the original party animal himself, Mr. Chip McElroy.)

The good- lots of lots of beer.

The bad- lots of lots of people/lines.

The ugly- some hipster man-boy called me an asshole because he didn’t win the raffle (learn to read the rules you stupid, illiterate, scenester fuck.)

The incredible- (512) blew off some socks with a cellared keg of the 2009 ONE and a rare appearance of the Whisky Barrel 2X Pecan Porter (don’t think I didn’t “sample” a few 6 or 7 of these.)

The from-left-feild- we debuted our BeerTownAustin Mustache glasses. If you got one, yr lucky. If not, we plan to have more available soon. Look left (<–) to see it.

Laser etching and wooden sign by our favorite laser artist in austin at Austin Laser Art.

The unsung heroes- big thanks to the Jester King gents for sharing their wooden banner frame. Sans their generosity, we’d have been left holding our rasturbated sign above our heads and out arms would have gotten so tired.

The rest of the story- Promoter Blake Richards did a quick video and e-mail interview wt us post GATXBF.

Here it is:

BTA: Was Saturday’s event what you initially set out to do?

GATXBF: We set out to give Austin another beer festival (the other being Flying Saucer’s in October) and we wanted the event to be something that could grow in the future.

BTA: Did you expect such a large turnout?

GATXBF: We expected a good turnout because Austin is an event driven town and there is a lot of interest in good craft and import beers.

BTA: Are there plans for a second GAtxBF, and if so, how would you like it be different than this year, if at all?

GATXBF: There are no plans for second event; but I would like to do it.  It would be different, we would go outside and we would work with the TABC to figure out how we can do draught beer.

BTA: Not even hours after the event Twitter, Facebook, forums and blogs were already pouring in reviews of the event, mostly positive, but some negative, how do you respond to those?

GATXBF: They have been about 90% positive, I have responded to as many as I can especially the negative feedback.  We are open to constructive negative feedback, we realize that the venue was way too crowded and the beer was in bottles not draught.  With that being said, there were a ton of beers to sample and there is a good chance that most of the guests could find at least twenty to thirty beers that they have never tried.

BTA: Lots of people are wondering why the beer was mainly served out of bottles, can you comment on that? 

GATXBF: There are a few reasons for the bottles, we are going to work on draught next year.

BTA: What type of post-festival feedback did you receive from the brewers?

GATXBF: The feedback from the breweries so far has been very good.  I strongly believe a good majority would want to come back.

BTA: Why did you choose Austin for your festival?

GATXBF: I have been coming to Austin for years, I have family in Austin, it is simply one of the best cities in the country.  Why not Austin!!

BTA: Assuming there will be a second festival, what are you most looking forward to next year?

GATXBF: If we do it next year, it will be outside.  I am looking forward to that, it will be a completely different event.

Here’s the video:

Here’re more pics: (also by the talented Mr. Haley)

Our friends from Austin Homebrew Supply.

Celeb sighting.

More glasses and some of the raffle stuff.

Eric at the Independence table.

Jeff of Jester King shaking hands wt @madhouselarry (thanks for all the beer runs, Larry!)

The rear of the Saint Arnold booth. Our friend Kevin pouring beers next to Mr. Frank Mancuso.

[UPDATE: Received an e-mail from Kevin explaining that the event on June 19th was NOT the anniversary party, but just the seasonal release party for the ONE.2.

From the horse's mouth:

The latest open house was not our 2^nd anniversary party. It was just the re-release of (512) ONE because every seasonal sells out so fast we had to squeeze another one in, because we love it,  and as a prelude to (512) TWO. We’ll have a 2^nd anniversary party in Late August (likely 8/28) where a brand new (512) beer will be unveiled!

No comment on the style of the TWO, but that is good news. I loved the ONE and was perfectly satisfied wt the idea of the ONE.2 being the next anniversary beer, but this just incredible. Maybe it will be whatever is resting in those barrels...

-Chris]

(512) celebrated their two-year anniversary with an open house/release party for their One.2 on June 19. If there’s something I know about June 19, it’s that it’s hot.

We got married on that same date six years ago and people still remind us how hot it was (get over it!). This party wasn’t any different. It was sunny. So much so I got a little bit of a farmers’ tan (sexy, I know).

We arrived just after the 2:00 p.m. start to find an entrance line extending to the back of the business/industrial park. It’s our own fault for increasing our wait… we stopped to talk to Frank and Lennie from Saint Arnold (warming up for their pub crawl later that evening). About 20 people walked past us while we chatted them up. We may be fools, but we’re no line cutters, so to the back we went.

Once inside the beer lines weren’t too bad, even with the weird vortex of inside and outside tap line crossing paths.  Knowing we had a full day of activities ahead of us, I opted for only a taster of the One.2, a Belgian-style strong ale coming in somewhere around 8% abv.

It was good: sweet, caramely and similar to last year’s. One of our followers said they did switch from Good Flow to Round Rock Honey for this batch.

I honestly can’t say too much more as I didn’t go back for it; it was a little too much for me to imagine drinking a full pint in the setting. I don’t think it stopped too many others.

It was soon on to the reliable and tasty IPA and Wit, the latter of which was perfectly refreshing on a Texas summer afternoon.

Every (512) party I have been to has been a good time and this was no exception. Yeah, you have to wait in line, but what do you expect with free beer?

While there we did spot some barrels filled with something fermenting… what could be next?!?! Word is the guys may be playing around with some new ideas like a soured version of their Wit. After their last barrel release (Whiskey Barrel Aged Double Pecan Porter!), I’m in for whatever comes next.