Oh yeah! Check check it! It’s coming up on our favorite week of the year and boy are we getting crunk!

And we got some shit going down.

SUNDAY 10-23 THE ULTIMATE FANBOY BIKE PUB CRAWL OFF STRIKES MFin’ BACK

Yes, the most popular event (in our opinion) of Austin Beer Week 2010 returns with a lazy, last minute, procrastinatin’, lackadaisical MFin’ attitude.
Ans by lazy, I mean that we’ve trimmed this crawl down to only three stops, yeah, lazy. Less bike, more pub for your money!

3ish PM FLYING SACUER > 4ISH PM DRAUGHT HOUSE (for the MFin’ Beer’ Olympics!) > 6ish PM BILLY’S ON BURNET (time to replenish those calories lost to biking with MFin’ COBRAS)
Bring cash, IDs, bikes, and bad attitudes!

WEDNESDAY 10-26 AUSTIN BEER GUIDE LAUNCH PARTY + FIRST MFin’ EVA HOPS & GRAIN TAPPING + ALL NEW “SELLECK” MUSTACHE GLASS

We’ve been working our collective asses off on this next edition, and we’re ready to share it and celebrate! This will soon replace the Bike Pub Crawl as the most popular ABW event. If you came to the last one, I promise we’ll have more glasses and hopefully that line out to the sidewalk will move a little faster.
STARTS AT 5PM, BUY ANY HOPS & GRAIN BEER, GET IT IN A “SELLECK” MUSTACHE GLASS TO MFin’ KEEP!

FRIDAY 10-28 SECOND CHANCE ON THE “SELLECK” MUSTACHE GLASS WITH HOPS & GRAIN BEER AT BILLY’S ON BURNET

This one’s got everything you love: Hops & Grain, Mustaches, and Austin’s best MFin’ burgers.
Maybe a surprise here, too.
PRESALE AT 6, GLASSES AT 7, PARTY TILL YOU DROP!

There are also tons of other events going on next week you can check out here.

See you out there!

Welcome to another brilliant episode of Knockin’ em Back!

Yikes stripes, this podcast is old.

This episode features the vocal stylings of Josh ‘Little Beard’, Aaron of CraftAustin/MyLastPint(over achiever), Meylo of Hopsonic, and myself.

We actually skipped over the second session from Lovejoys as we dedicated the majority of those 20 minutes previewing Austin Beer Week (which was great) and the 3rd Bike Pub Crawl (which was also great). Obviously, that wouldn’t be near as enjoyable as listening to us spew content that doesn’t recognize timeliness as a news value.

Good, good stuff here.

OK, so actually we do talk about some news that’s old. We pour some beer for the fallen brewpub homies, Two Rows in Houston and the Covey in Fort Worth. Sad stuff. We give a shout out to Steve at Allgoodbeer.com and Stuart for running much more newsworthy blogs than ours. We pontificate upon the business of brewpubs, and then move on once we realize how little we know. We still fake it enough to be embarrassing in retrospect.

Apparently Black Star Co-op had recently opened but not yet started serving their own beers yet.

If you don’t listen to the whole episode, at least skip to the 12:45 point where the Lovejoys jukebox loudly interrupts Josh as he is giving the low down on Black Star Co-op’s beer selection. It’s awesome. Totally worth the listen.

We talk about the first Jester King brew and I drop the comment more than once that I crashed their first brew day; I guess I was looking for a pat on the head this night.

We then begin to astutely speculate on the beer offerings for the Draught House birthday party and 3rd Flying Saucer Fall Beer Fest.

Enough writing, just listen.

Much thanks to Lovejoys, Josh, Aaron, Meylo and beer.
Enjoy!

Audio

Direct link to the mp3 HERE

Subscribe to the Podcast

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!

Despite their irregularity, the bike pub crawls are one of our favorite events. Rolling through some of Austin’s best beer bars while making new friends – who wouldn’t love it?

With such a lag since our last one, we knew we were going to have to really bring it this time, which is why we teamed up with our frenemy for the BeerTownAustin vs Craft Austin Ultimate Fanboy Bike Pub Crawl Throwdown 2010. (Want more words in there? We got plenty where that came from.)

We’ll be kicking off Austin Beer Week on Sunday, October 24 by riding through north central Austin and hitting up some of our favorite neighborhood bars. We’ll give out wristbands for all riders to get beer specials at the stops (think cheap Texas pints and such).

Meet up on the Flying Saucer patio at 2:00 p.m. After hanging there, we’ll be off to Draught House to catch some of their Beer Olympics, then to Billy’s on Burnet, followed by Thunderbird Koenig and ending at one of Austin’s newest bars (and soon to be brewpub), Black Star Co-Op, just in time for dinner.

We’ve had a fun time at the past rides and are hoping for a great turnout. If you can, RSVP on Facebook so we can give the bars a heads up on how many people are coming through.

Bring I.D., cash and water and tip well. We’re not looking to make a scene so follow the rules of the road and be friendly. Helmets, light and common sense encouraged – we can’t afford to lose any more readers. And if you do find yourself in trouble, just tell them you’re with Craft Austin.

See you Sunday.

p.s. – Feel free to comment below or on Facebook if you are riding from south or east and are looking for others to ride with to the Saucer and home – safety in numbers.

[Big thanks to Design Shaman for the poster artwork!]

Part two at Thunderbird Coffee Manor. Check out part one here.

Listen in as JIB, Josh (little beard/@itzsprad), Aaron (CraftAustin/@elmachuca), and myself finishing up our beers and talking about more stuff.

Enthralling content, believe me.

We were joined by recent Statesman Social Media Award winner, Cindy Royal. She was my New Media professor at Texas State. She had some good stuff to say about social media, using it in journalism, and some cool sxsw stuff.

Check out her music blog On That Note.

It was great to run into her.

We also talk about Aaron’s recent plate winning at Flying Saucer… and why he didn’t invite any of us out to share in his celebration. Chump.

We talk about the next bike pub crawl and why they are awesome. More info on that soon.

The audio is off in this one. We tried to have Shawn call in and put him on speaker phone, but it didn’t work, and somehow I ended up turning up the reverb on my mic. Annoying, I know.

We will be recording the second Thunderbird sponsored podcast some point this week.

Listen to this episode for info on how to WIN A $25 THUNDERBIRD COFFEE GIFT CARD LIVE AS WE RECORD THE NEXT EPISODE.

Follow us on TWITTER for info on when and where to go and what to do to win.

FYI, this episode isn’t as crusty as the others, but still not alright to share with children.

Our apologies for the less than perfect audio levels (we’re recording at a bar while drinking beer, cut us some slack) and also sorry for talking about Twitter so much… we have no excuse for being so pathetic.

Anyways…

Much thanks to Chris and Ryan of Thunderbird for the beer and the support (emotional and otherwise).

Thunderbird, where you come with full intentions to be productive but you just end up hanging out and drinking beer, and that’s OK.

Cheers!

Audio

Direct link to the mp3 HERE

Subscribe to the Podcast

More photos from that night.

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.

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*

So we had a Bike Pub Crawl raincheck ride a few weeks ago… and it rained again.

At least it wasn’t cold this time. Just wet. Really wet.

We cheated too. Shawn and I drove our bikes to Dog & Duck just in case anyone showed up to ride in the rain… and people did. And it was fun. Just wet.

We drank at Dog & Duck till about 4:15 (heard we just barely missed the Independence crew), then had a nice leisurely ride through campus to Crown & Anchor. Here our pack of five turned into a pack of SEVEN plus a car!

We stepped up our game and decided from that point on it was worth documenting.

The ride to Draught House was rough and we lost a few riders who later joined back up after they swapped their wet clothes for dry ones and bikes for another car. Yeah! TWO CARS on the BIKE Pub Crawl!

On the ride to Flying Saucer we lost that second car and a third rider (all of the original riders). Two of the three rejoined later.

On the whole, it was fun, wet, automotive, and beery. But mainly, WE DIDN’T CANCEL THIS ONE!
Thanks to everyone who came out and got wet and drank beers with us, it was fun. And thanks to the bars who tolerated a soaked group of cyclists on a Sunday afternoon.

We think we may make this a reoccurring thing. I don’t think any other bike groups have called Sunday afternoons. Maybe every second Sunday? We’ll let you know.

Enjoy the video.

UPDATE: The fine folks at Independence Brewery will be riding with us on Sunday and passing out some sweet Indy swag!

Sunday, 11-08-09. Bike Pub Crawl wt stops at Dog & Duck, Crown & Anchor, Draught House, and Flying Saucer. Meet at 3:30 pm at Dog & Duck (ride at 4 pm). Casual ride. Bring ID, $$$, water, etc., See you Sunday.

<a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/tx/austin/642125433073653256″ mce_href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/tx/austin/642125433073653256″>BTA Bike to Beer (11/08/09)</a><br/><a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/tx/austin” mce_href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/tx/austin”>Find more Bike Rides in Austin, Texas</a>

Sunday, 10-11-09. Bike Pub Crawl wt stops at Dog & Duck, Crown & Anchor, Draught House, and Flying Saucer. Meet at 3:30 pm at Dog & Duck (ride at 4:30 pm). Casual ride. Bring ID, $$$, water, etc., See you Sunday.

Map after the break

Legend:
water symbol=beer

<a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/tx/austin/642125433073653256″ mce_href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/tx/austin/642125433073653256″>BTA Bike to Beer (10/11/09)</a><br/><a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/tx/austin” mce_href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/tx/austin”>Find more Bike Rides in Austin, Texas</a>