We’re still recuperating and vacationing following Austin Beer Week so things are a little slow. Thus, news of the copy/paste kind.

Last night Jester King announced a new beer, Noble King Hoppy Farmhouse Ale. Then they went on to talk about a lot more. The highlights:

• Noble King is a medium strength, dry, golden ale brewed with their farmhouse yeast, and an abundance of noble, European hops.
• Noble King is “thoroughly hoppy, yet elegant, dry, balanced, and drinkable.”
• Noble King will debut this Saturday (Nov 5) at the tasting room, followed by a draught and cask-conditioned rollout around the state. Bottles expected late November or December.
• The “farmhouse” Wytchmaker and Black Metal released during Austin Beer Week will eventually replace the English ale versions as Jester King works towards using the same house yeast for all beers.
• They’re working on a new Farmhouse Table Beer, followed by a limited release Farmhouse Strong Ale, new Farmhouse Provision Ale, and farmhouse version of Commercial Suicide.
• After seeing the results of time spent aging with wild yeast and in barrels, Jester King is now describing Das Wunderkind! as a “Sour Saison” and Boxer’s Revenge as a “Barrel-Aged Wild Ale” as opposed to farmhouse ales.
•  Das Wunderkind! will see a small bottle release in the upcoming months.

For all the details straight from the satyr’s mouth, read below or visit the Jester King blog.

This Saturday, November 5th, during our weekly tasting room hours and tours, our newest beer, Noble King Hoppy Farmhouse Ale will be available for sampling. Noble King is a medium strength, dry, golden ale brewed with our farmhouse yeast, and, as its name suggests, an abundance of noble, European hops. We’re all very big fans of the subtle, delicate earthy flavors of classic European noble hops, and particularly enjoy the way that those flavors interplay with the character of our farmhouse yeast. Though the hops in Noble King are front and center, they don’t overwhelm the palate, the way some high alpha (highly bitter) New World varieties sometimes can. This results in a beer that’s thoroughly hoppy, yet elegant, dry, balanced, and drinkable. Following Saturday’s debut, it will be available on draught and cask-conditioned at a small number of venues and special events around the state, with an anticipated bottle release some time in late November or December.

If you were at any of our Austin Beer Week events or our Funk’n Sour Gravity Fest, you may have noticed a few other new additions to our lineup, as well, including “farmhouse” editions of Wytchmaker Rye IPA and Black Metal Imperial Stout, which will ultimately replace the English ale yeast versions that we’ve been brewing up until this point. The strain of farmhouse yeast that we use is much more difficult to work with and more sensitive to environmental variables than the English strain, but we believe that, when handled correctly, it adds an extra layer of character and complexity to the finished beers. Using the same house yeast for all of our beers also allows us to manage and reuse that yeast much more effectively. Over several generations, it will continue to evolve and adapt to the particular environmental conditions of our brewery, contributing its own unique terroir to all of our beers. This house terroir is something that we feel is part of what it means to be an authentic farmhouse brewery.

In addition to Noble King and the farmhouse versions of Wytchmaker and Black Metal, we also have a new Farmhouse Table Beer that’s currently in the works, to be followed soon by a limited release Farmhouse Strong Ale, a new Farmhouse Provision Ale, and a farmhouse version of Commercial Suicide Dark Mild. Some of you may recognize the terms “Farmhouse Table Beer” and “Farmhouse Provision Ale” as having been applied at one time to two other beers that we showcased during Austin Beer Week: Das Wunderkind! and Boxer’s Revenge. When we first formulated these beers, we had a particular vision in mind for each of them, but after extended aging in oak barrels with wild yeast and souring bacteria, Das Wunderkind! and Boxer’s Revenge quite literally took on a life of their own, and as we continued to sample them, those visions began to change. Eventually, we felt that the terms “Farmhouse Table Beer” and “Farmhouse Provision Ale” no longer captured the essence of what they had become, so we decided to change those descriptions. Das Wunderkind!, we felt, had become a very good example of a sour saison, of the sort Yvan De Baets talks about in Phil Markowski’s book, Farmhouse Ales, so we decided to label it “Sour Saison”. (Look for a very limited bottle release of Das Wunderkind! Sour Saison sometime in the upcoming months.) Boxer’s Revenge has not been bottled yet, but when it is, we plan to go with the more straightforwardly descriptive designation, “Barrel-Aged Wild Ale”.

Our new Table Beer and Provision Ale, which we haven’t yet named, will be “sibling beers” to Noble King, made with similar malts and hops, and our farmhouse yeast, but with the Table Beer lower in ABV and more sessionable, and the Provision Ale much stronger and better suited to cellaring. Ultimately, all three beers will become part of our regular, year-round line up. At the same time, we will also continue to produce Das Wunderkind!, Boxer’s Revenge, and a variety of other “wild” beers, but we will do so without any pre-announced release dates or promises of consistent supply, so that we can give them the time they need to mature and, as we’ve said all along, let them tell us when they’re ready to be packaged and released.

image stolen from Craft Austin

If you missed the Jester King grand opening party then this could be a chance to redeem yourself. ZAX is hosting a brewer’s night/kick off party for the Jester King guys on February 16th. It’s not clear wether the glassware offered is the pint glass or the grand opening snifter, either way it will come with beer in it, so who cares? If you’ve never been to ZAX, they have a great little patio and a decent draft selection. I would plan on getting there early as the bar area tends to fill up fairly quickly for special events.

Full press release below…

Zax Restaurant at 312 Barton Springs Rd. is pleased to announce that we have partnered with Jester King Craft Brewery to host the Jester King Craft Brewery kick off party at Zax Restaurant on Wednesday February 16, 2011 at 6:00.  Come on out and meet the brewers.  Enjoy the great food at Zax, paired with a variety of delicious Jester King Beers, and keep the commemorative logo glass.  Featured Jester King Beer will include Wytchmaker Rye IPA, Commercial Suicide Oaked Dark Mild, and Boxer’s Revenge Farmhouse Provision Ale.

Zax Restaurant is pleased to be celebrating 8 years of Serious Food, Great Beer and Stylish Wines

Zax Restaurant

312 Barton Springs Rd.

Austin, TX 78704

512-481-0100

www.zaxaustin.com

Sure, the Black Metal, Commercial Suicide and Wytchmaker are all great, but if you’ve been following the progress of the guys at Jester King over the past year, this is the beginning of what we’ve really been waiting for.

This weekend they’ll roll out Boxer’s Revenge  Farmhouse Provision Ale, the first of three authentic farmhouse ales they’ll produce year-round (the other two coming this spring). Boxer’s Revenge is initially fermented with French farmhouse yeast then aged in oak wine barrels with wild yeast  before finally being dry-hopped with fresh Cascade and Centennial hops. Yum.

Boxer’s Revenge will be available at their grand opening party this Saturday, January 29. Count us in. You?

The full story, copy and pasted for your pleasure:

“Jester King Craft Brewery is very pleased to announce the debut of Boxer’s Revenge  Farmhouse Provision Ale this Saturday, January 29th at the brewery’s Grand Opening Celebration.  Boxer’s Revenge is the first of three authentic farmhouse ales brewed as part of Jester King’s year-round lineup.  The others are Das Wunderkind!, a farmhouse “table beer”, and Cocksure, a hoppy, amber farmhouse ale inspired by the French tradition of bière de garde.  Das Wunderkind! and Cocksure will be available in the coming months.

All three of Jester King’s year-round farmhouse ales are aged in oak wine barrels with wild yeast after undergoing an initial fermentation with French farmhouse yeast.  After aging, the individual barrels are blended to taste.

Boxer’s Revenge is inspired by the hearty “stock ales” or “provision ales” produced by some of iconic farmhouse breweries located along the Franco-Belgian border and named in honor of the stalwart workhorse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.  It combines delicate notes of tropical fruit, citrus and spice from the primary French farmhouse yeast with tart, rustic, earthy notes from the Brettanomyces.  A final dry-hopping with fresh Cascade and Centennial hops adds yet another layer of depth and complexity.

Following Jester King’s Grand Opening Celebration, Boxer’s Revenge will be available on draught at a small number of accounts throughout Texas.  In the months that follow, it will be released as a regular, year-round offering in both kegs and 750mL, amber, champagne-style bottles.  Please see the attached information sheet about Boxer’s Revenge.”

Photo and images courtesy of Jester King

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

Those asshole homebrewers are at it again. Fresh off the successes of their first special release (Whiskey Barrel Aged Commercial Suicide) and first seasonal (Black Metal Imp Stout), the Stuffings brothers and crew are opening wide the doors of the brewery and welcoming the thirsty throngs.

Jester King Craft Brewery’s grand opening party is scheduled for Saturday, January 29th from 1pm to 9pm.

As the poster says, Music, Food, Beer.

Maybe some of that beer getting love in the barrels all over the brewery will be ready for tasting.

See you there.

From the horses’ mouth:

Friends,

Jester King would like to formally invite you and all of your craft-beer-loving-friends to attend the grand opening party at our new brewery!

Saturday, January 29th, 2011, from 1:00pm til 9:00pm
13005 Fitzhugh Road, Austin, Texas 78736

The day will be a festival atmosphere filled with shiny classic cars, astounding live bands, delicious hot food, a face-melting fire pit, jaw-dropping displays of facial hair, awesome merchandise, scintillating fire-dancers, and, of course, unique Jester King beer.

The venue itself is something to behold – a former horse farm nestled in the Texas hill country outside of Oak Hill, this “green” brewery is constructed mostly of recycled building materials. The brewery is going to start harvesting rainwater soon, and the scenic grounds feature a rustic 200ft pole barn replete with chandeliers and hay bale couches!

Visit our Facebook event page to get update info on bands, food & other entertainment, share the link and invite your friends!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175626689141583

Thanks for your support!

~Jester King Craft Brewery

So we’re making this beer from about 90% donated ingredients. We’re calling it the 90% Deniability Ale.

Via the Austin Zealots we acquired some Real Ale Sisyphus second runnings. We then gave the gents at Jester King a ring and scored some of their inoculated house yeast. Next we approached Draught House and were generously given 11 pounds of Celia hops. We purchased the remaining ~10% ingredients at Austin Homebrew out of our deep deep BeerTownAustin pockets.

Awesome.

We got the second runnings on Wednesday and “brewed” on Sunday (the wort from Real Ale was so hot it popped the butt off my corney keg!)

The wort was ~1.055 when we got it. We added a half a pound of Belgian Dark Candi Sugar, two gallons of water, and finished out at 1.060 OG. We added 1 oz of the Celia hops at 60 minutes, then half an ounce at 30 and another half at 15. We pitched with  White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast 550 for primary fermentation. There were signs of active fermentation within 12 hours. (see the video)

Next we plan to rack the beer in my Balcones Blue Corn Whiskey barrel and inoculate with the Jester King wild house strain and let it sit for a few months while moving the 5.3 gallon barrel among the various climates in my house [read: we're souring shit out of this beer]. Maybe we’ll add some cherries to it. Who knows.

So maybe come this Spring we’ll have five gallons of swill. OR maybe we’ll have five gallons of the most lusted over local collaboration known to man (who reads our blog and knows anything about the generous donators involved in this brew).

Much thanks to Real Ale, the Austin Zealots, Draught House, and Jester King for their donations. Also thanks to Little Beard for his paying attention to the Internet, driving to get the wort, and for brewing wt me.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of this brew and depending on how it comes out, when/if we’ll make it available to share.

So check out the video of this sweet primary fermentation.

UPDATE (11/16):

JESTER KING WILL BE POURING THEIR WHISKEY BARREL AGED COMMERCIAL SUICIDE ON THE PATIO AT BILLY’S FOR OUR GLASS NIGHT.

MORE ABOUT THE BEER HERE. THERE ARE ONLY 10 KEGS OF THIS VERSION SO COME AND GET IT.  SEE YOU AT 7:00 ON THURSDAY, BRING CASH.

Update (11/10) (From Alex at Billy’s):

…the event will be with the Wytchmaker Rye
IPA…Will be on the patio (weather permitting),
and will start at 7:00 P.M.

——————————————————————————————-

Mustaches, Billy’s, and Jester King. These are a few of my favorite things.

Could also pass as some of our Twitter cloud larger tags (did we ever pretend to be objective?)

Come out NEXT THURSDAY, 11-18-10 and enjoy all three of these things at once.

First ~70 Jester King pours gets a Mustache Glass for keepers.

We’ll be there. Jester King will be there. Billy will probably be there. You should be there, too.

If you’ve never had a reason to go out on a Thursday night and drink good beer, you do now.

Come out and have one more than your wife would like you to with us. We’ll all be in the doghouse together.

Hmm. Let’s say 7ish?

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!

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.

The good fellas at Jester King had us out for their ground breaking party a little over a month ago. It wasn’t an official media event, but we still got some nice photos, so I will post them here.

These are pre slab and warehouse build.

All photos courtesy Shawn Phillips, who in a few weeks will become the official BTA Honalulu correspondent.

MIke was not present at the ground breaking as he was attending the Craft Brewers Conference in Chicago at the time. Check out his write up of that experience on the Jester King blog, which these days is updated more often than this one.

The guys had burgers, hotdogs, and plenty of beer. They were pouring the Das Wunderkind, the RYE IPA, an experimental double IPA, the La Danse Macabre, the Masquerade Red, and maybe one more I forgot. Remember I wasn’t taking notes as it wasn’t a media event.

Todd from LoveJoy’s also brought out a keg of his Pale ale. It was very nice. Todd is making some good beer these days, go check it out.

Much thanks to Jester King for having us out and for all the blog love they share wt BTA.

Watch out for a cool JK announcement later this week.