Beer Town Austin » live oak brewing co

Alamo Draft House and Live Oak Brewing Co Inglorious Basterds Dinner

Chris Troutman — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:08:14 +0000

Way back during Austin Beer Week, one of our numerous roving reporters (we’re everywhere and we’re watching…) attended the Alamo Draught House and Live Oak Brewing Co Inglorious Basterds Dinner and this is his take away. The author wishes to remain anonymous. Don’t ask.

Being a self-professed fan of ‘Inglorious Basterds’, Live Oak beers, and Alamo Drafthouse’s famed feasts, the next step for me was to experience all three simultaneously. Thanks to a little theatre-brewery coordination, during Austin Beer Week this trifecta was achieved.

Beer tastings usually have a certain order to their indulgence, starting with the milder beers before moving onward to those that offer higher risk of palate fatigue. The addition of food, however, allows the disregard of certain standards and in this case, a complete reversal of the expected order.

The first highlight came as service began with Live Oak’s ‘Old Treehugger’, which weighs in at a little over 12% abv. This rich barleywine offers depth in its layered malt flavors and its buttery texture paired quite well with the complex flavors of the kosher salt seared scallops with caramelized blood orange topped with a Hefeweizen reduction, served atop a latke.

Live Oak’s festbier seasonal, dubbed ‘Oaktoberfest,’ washed down the kreplach nicely, and the hearty seared potato dumpling complemented the clean, malty lager.

The classic ‘Pilz’ accompanied a sauerkraut and roast pork sandwich, tender from an eight hour stay in the oven, but falling slightly short of a flavorful counterpoint to the Czech-style pilsner.

Ending the feast and the film with an appropriate hoorah, an apple strudel lived up to the hype afforded it by its namesake, Colonel Hans Landa, and solidly anchored the evening’s pairings. If only there had been more ‘Old Treehugger’ to wash that down…

Austin Beer Week and Stuff

Chris Troutman — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:07:02 +0000

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!

Independence Brewing Co to Host Beer Connoisseur Magazine Release Party

Chris Troutman — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:04:30 +0000

Amy over at Independence said this:

Saturday, Feb 27th, 4-8 pm, we are hosting a release party for Beer Connoisseur Magazine. Basically, we’ve invited all the other area breweries to bring their beers over to the brewery for the event for a beer tasting fest. So far we have commitments from: Real Ale, Saint Arnold, Live Oak, 512 Brewing, North by Northwest, and Uncle Billy’s.

Wow wow wow. This already great event just got greater.

We’ll be out there, hope to see you too.

BeerTownAustin’s Best Stuff of 2009 Results!!!!

Chris Troutman — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:46:54 +0000

The results are in. There were a total of 78 respondents (not bad for our first try at something like this) over five days.

So I took a Research Methods class… I just forgot to test the survey before publishing it. Dr. Peirce would be disappointed. Based on the results I realize that the term “regional” wasn’t clear enough. Originally it was within the context of local, regional, national, international. But for a free membership on Survey Monkey you are only allowed 10 question surveys so when I eliminated the national and international categories, it made “regional” a relative term.

So I’m sorry if it was confusing.

Blah blah blah. Here are the results. Top two of each category are listed.

1. Best ATX Bar

Draught House

Flying Saucer

2. Best ATX Brewpub

Uncle Billy’s Brew & Que

Draught House

3. Best ATX Beer Store/Market

Spec’s

Whip in

4. Best ATX Beer Event