This coming Saturday, October 22nd, the fine folks out at Independence Brewing Co will be celebrating their 7th anniversary.

They’ll be celebrating with beers, bands, and food in addition to the unveiling of their Seventh Anniversary English-style oak-aged IPA. Pretty excited about this one.

From the horses‘ mouth:

Join the Independence Brewing team in celebrating 7 years of brewing handcrafted beers in Austin. Our 7th Anniversary Party will feature a special 7th Anniversary beer, rare beers from the Brewluminati series, and cask tappings, in addition to our regular killer beer lineup.

A commemorative 7th Anniversary Glass will be available for purchase for $12.

Special Beer tappings every 30 minutes as follows:

4:15 Brewluminati All Seeing Eye(PA) Cask

4:45 Brewluminati Braggot

5:15 Brewluminati Epanoui

5:45 2010 Jasperilla Old Ale

6:15 Brewluminati Thinker’s Ale

6:45 Brewluminati Gold Deluxe

Our Brewer-led band will kick off an evening of live music. Rockabilly 3-man band Duece Coupe will keep things rolling.

Boomerang’s will be on site selling their delicious Australian pies, including the ever-popular Bootlegger Meat and Cheese Pie.

American Craft Beer Week starts today.

Good times. Here are some local events. If I missed anything, add in the comments.

See you out there. (Thanks to Lee at I Love Beer for the Ginger Man list).

Events at Black Star Co-op:
5-16

Member-Owner Beer Design Forum

Black Star Co-op, 7020 Easy Wind Dr, Ste 100, Austin, Texas, 78752
5-17

Pub Hours with the Board

Black Star Co-op, 7020 Easy Wind Dr, Ste 100, Austin, Texas, 78752
5-18

Dog & Draft Combo Special

Black Star Co-op, 7020 Easy Wind Dr, Ste 100, Austin, Texas, 78752
5-22

Member-Owner Appreciation Day

Black Star Co-op, 7020 Easy Wind Dr, Ste 100, Austin, Texas, 78752

Events at the Draught House:

Independence Brewing Co Events:
5-21

Draught Sessions

Independence Brewing Co., 3913 Todd Lane #607, Austin, Texas, 78744

Ginger Man Events:

Monday – (512) Cask-conditioned Cascabel Cream Stout
Tuesday – Real Ale The Kraken (barrel-aged Sisyphus)
Wednesday – Independence Thinker’s Ale (from their Brewluminati Series)
Thursday – Sierra Nevada Ovila Dubbel
Friday – St. Arnold Cask-conditioned Divine Reserve 11
Saturday – Real Ale Empire (barrel-aged Lost Gold IPA)
Sunday – Ommegang Gnomegang (collaboration beer with d’Achouffe Brewery)

Independence is putting together another pub crawl for Saturday, February 26th.

This time they will be venturing over to West 6th St for some afternoon drinking. The crowd will start off at 3:00 with Opal Divine’s Freehouse and drink their way over to The Ginger Man. The brewery is teasing us with promises of a one off cask by Indy’s head brewer Justin Rizza. Check out the event page for more details and to RSVP.

If you don’t already, follow Independence on twitter to keep up with what’s going on around the brewery.

So a few weeks ago we did our final “buy the beer keep the ‘stache” event with the fine folks at Black Star Co-op and Independence Brewing Co.

Black Star hosted, Independence brought out a special cask of their Stash IPA, and we took some sweet ‘stache pics.

Get ready for some beer porn, mustache style.

Or actually only four. But it might as well be a million as you can probably only make two or three if you’re lucky.

Here’s what’s going down.

[Events listed in alphabetical order]

Black Star Co-op Grand Opening

We’ll kick off the festivities with a big outdoor party on Friday, December 10th from 6PM to midnight. Join us for Grand Opening ceremonies, the first tap of our house beers, and a party into the night. Music by Vanessa Lively, the Ugly Beats,Melogrand, and Brownout!

The entire evening will be family friendly with free hot apple cider, face painting, and a bounce house.

RSVP to the Facebook Event (and share it with your friends!).

This is the one everybody’s been waiting for. We’ve had the food, drank of  the excellently selected taps (kudos, Mr. Booth!), and enjoyed the patio, now it’s time for the house beer. All eyes are on you Mr. Young.

Eat Local Week’s Texas Craft Brewers Mini-Festival

Presented by Black Star Co-op and Wheatsville Co-op. Meet our finest Texas craft brewers and sample their wares at this popular Eat Local Week event. Craft brewers will include: Live Oak Brewing Company, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, Real Ale Brewing Company, Independence Brewing Company,Thirsty Planet Brewing Company, Black Star Co-op, Jester King Craft Brewery, 512 Brewing Company, Twisted X Brewing Company, Austin Beerworks, Circle Brewing Company, South Austin Brewery, Hops and Grain (brewery and canine bakery), Buddha’s Brew Kombucha, Rahr Brewing Company and more! Join us at Black Star Co-op from 2–5 pm. $15. Click here to purchase tickets through Frontgate Tickets!

So this is pretty much a who’s who of the local beer scene. Sounds like a win win event.

Independence Brewing Co Campus Pub Crawl

Come out and join us as we crawl through campus the Sunday after finals!
How to Indy Crawl(and get a sweet limited run pint glass) :
We will be at the following spots near the times listed below. Punch cards will be passed out at Cuatro’s. We will be punching cards throughout, its your responsibility to get it punched at each location, don’t forget! We will be moving as a group according to the following schedule:

1:30PM “spanish four”(1004 W 24th)
2:30PM “biblical brothers” (2313 Rio Grande)
3:30PM “shroomin”(2426 Guadalupe)
5:00PM “holy” “wall” spot(2538 Guadalupe St), Black Brew will be playing a show

We will give you a punch card and if you get it punched at each location we will give you a limited run Indy Crawl Pint glass!!! Must be 21 years old to participate.
Come out and have a good time with us!
PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY!!!!
Cabs and Buses are readily available in the Campus area!

Oh yeah. We like us some pub crawling. This one looks pretty solid.

Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling Grand Open House

Sat, Dec 11, 2010
12:00 pm to 05:00 pm

Come help us celebrate our grand opening at our Brewstillery Open House. We’ll have samples of our beer, tours on the hour, and live music. Food will be available for purchase. Hang out at the brewstillery with us as we celebrate finally being able to brew local beer for San Antonio. There’s no cost for the event, but please RSVP.

We’re real excited about this one. Big fans of the OPA and very much looking forward to the Mesquite Smoked Porter and huge Belgian Strong ale. This should be a fun time.

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!

Couple weeks ago Parkside had us out for their ‘summer nights’ Independence beer dinner.

It was pretty swanky. Four courses plus h’orderves. Nice.

I’m not a food blogger and I won’t pretend to be. No lie, I was there for the beer, and the food was nothing to scoff at either. In fact, in recollection I think I liked it all. None of the notes I scribbled on the menu are negative.

Also Mr. Justin Rizza, head brewer out at Indy Brewing was present to talk about the beers and pairings. It was nice and educational. Also the Parkside chef came out to introduce the dishes. I like this. I like when beer dinners have someone talking about the beer and the food and why they paired them together. Especially when they can go into enough detail that it shows they didn’t just use that beer/food pairing chart you can find on BeerAdvocate.

Thanks Parkside, Independence for putting some thought into it and educated us on in the process.

I came in a bit late and missed most of the appetizers. Luckily, our server was able to procure some chicken loli-pops for me. These were all paired wt the Freestyle Wheat.

Course two was fun. Pickled stuff. Pickled on premise. I’ll confess- I took the one pickled egg yolk for our table. Sorry team.

Presentation is key. They nailed it. How’s that for some food blogger shit? This is still course one, the charcuterie platter. The pate was my favorite. They paired it wt the Amber. Not bad, but I was craving a Stash IPA.

Course two was grilled halibut, steamed clams, octopus, petite potatoes, etc. Best course of the night, in my opinion. There were smoked peppers in the broth. I love halibut and this was good halibut. Paired with the Pale Ale. Not bad, still would have gone for the Stash.

It was too dark for pics when course three came out, and I get embarrassed using the flash. It was a pork plate paired with the Bootlegger Brown. I liked the pork ribs and in my notes I scribbled “best pairing?”

NOPE. Dessert was the best.

Best. Pairing. Ever. From the notes, “the best!!”

TWO EXCLAMATION MARKS ! !

I meant business. It was outstanding. A cinnamon sugar yeast doughnut, pretzel ice cream, chocolate, and blueberry crumble paired with the Convict Hill Oatmeal Stout. This pairing did it for me. See the photo? I couldn’t even wait to take a picture before I started digging in.

Parkside mentioned they plan on doing more of these. I hope so.

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.

If you didn’t already know from this or this, Beer Connoisseur magazine held a party at the home of Independence Brewing Company on Saturday, February 27 for the launch of the second issue of their publication.  Some bloggers may have beaten us to the punch with a recap first, but how many had VIDEO?!?! (Scroll down now if you hate reading).

The weather and turnout ended up being great for everyone to rub elbows with fellow beer geeks and industry type folks (and maybe even a few of those professional media types).

While we were disappointed to see that not all the local brewers we had hoped for could make it out, no one went thirsty. In addition to some of the Independence staples, Lovejoy’s brought out their Blonde (which I did not have but heard was tasty) and Pale Ale, while North by Northwest sampled their Black Ale (excellent!) and IPA.

During our time there we also caught wind that Independence would soon be bottling their Stash IPA and Convict Hill Oatmeal Stout, probably their two best offerings in my opinion.

The Beer Connoisseur staff told us they took the time to visit Uncle Billy’s, the Ginger Man (where a pre-party was held for those who just couldn’t get enough beer) and some other local watering holes while in town to get better acquainted with the ever-growing Austin beer scene/brews.

Their publication and site are dedicated to all things related to beer culture. They hail from Atlanta, GA, which is experiencing a small but strong beer transformation (the Brick Store Pub consistently ranks as one of the best bars in the U.S. from Beer Advocate), and are excited about expanding into the Austin area.

Check out the video with Nick Kaye, managing editor, Beer Connoisseur to hear more about the work they are up to and what brought them to Austin. You can look for their quarterly magazine to start popping up around town soon.

Note: We feel it’s our duty to let you know we were extended a complimentary entry. Had I personally paid the entry fee, I would have been a lot more disappointed in the lack of breweries in attendance.

Hmm. So we decided it was a good idea to do this again.

In our defense, we met this guy we don’t know who said he heard the first Knocking ‘em Back podcast… no word if he liked it. BUT that he heard it was all we needed to do a second one.

Thanks to Flying Saucer, our sponsor, and to Rob, Knocking ‘em Back’s resident Cicerone, for having us out, serving us beers, foods, giving us a table, an electric outlet, and professional beer opinions (look out for an Over a Pint featuring the Cicerones Rob & Sam).

Also, huge thanks to Tim from the Get Dressed Show for sitting in and producing this episode (notice how much better it sounds than the last? Don’t get used to it. Tim has invested some $$$ into his recording setup. We spend our $$$ on beers…)

Tim, JIB, Shawn, Josh, and I sat down, drank some beers (Tim had a Lone Star), talked about some local news including the Saint Arnold pub crawl, the Beer Connoisseur party at Independence Brewery, the (512) Brewing 2X Pecan Porter bottle release, and the TX debut of the Stone Sublimely Self Righteous.

And guess what. Rob broke some news on the podcast.

Beans were spilled revealing that FLYING SAUCER AUSTIN GOT A CASE OF THE (512) 2X PECAN PORTER.

Listen for more details.

We had a lot to talk about and not much I felt the world could live without, so instead of editing it down to ~30 minutes, I cut it in half. Look for Knocking ‘em Back at Flying Saucer EP 2.2 next week.

Again, this podcast is not suitable for toddlers, moms, baptists, grandmas, or Rush Limbaugh, so listen in headphones or with trusted friends.

Enjoy!

Direct link to the mp3 HERE.

Hmm. We forgot to bring a camera again. Shawn got a new fancy camera. Maybe he’ll bring it out and we’ll get some photos next time.