Photos: Larry McIntosh Lycra and beer. Mmmmm. The starting line at Yett Memorial Park

Much thanks to our buddy Larry McIntosh over at USABeerTrends.com for sharing this excerpt about the Real Ale Ride. It should appear shortly in a full on American Craft Beer Week wrap up on their site soon.

MAY 22 — Real Ale Ride, Blanco, TX – MADHouseLarry with the Beef & Pie Cruiser Team

Photos: Larry McIntosh Beef & Pie Cruiser Team Captain Beefheart and MADHouseLarry, PieMan Yates lurking in the background.

A few weeks ago I was invited to join the Beef & Pie Productions Cruiser Team for the 2010 Real Ale Ride held in and around Blanco, Texas – the home of Real Ale Brewing. Quite an honor, as all members of the team had the same goal in mind: Finish the ride as quickly as possible so we can get to the beer drinkin’.

Problem. Of the bikes I do own, the only cruiser is a relic from large item trash pick-up day. I found it in a pile of car tires and oven doors and three-legged chairs by the curb in my neighborhood. The previous owner seemed a little confused on the issue of bike maintenance as this bike had been “maintained” by spray paint. The rims, spokes, seat springs, handlebars – basically anything that had been plain metal or chrome – had been spray painted silver. The tires and seat were spray painted black, and the frame looks like it was painted with a brush. Needless to say, I adopted the hulk hoping to make a project out of it. It has sat in my storage shed ever since. So, with a couple of weeks to remodel the cruiser, I figured, no cruiser. However, my mountain bike would be close enough for this crew. Fat , knobby tires and all. The idea, after all, was to finish quickly and get on with the beer.

So, we did the shortest route, a 15 miler that rolled out from Yett Memorial Park in Blanco, through the south end of town and out to some mild rolling hills and along the banks of the Blanco River. The few hills there were did a decent job of splitting up our bunch. Our Cruiser team were riding everything from a single speed pulling a kid in a trailer, to new, multi-gear city cruisers with smooth shifting internal hubs, to balloon tire beach bikes. While some folks hardly broke a sweat, others were beyond VO2 max. Thank goodness for the post-ride refreshments!

Photos: Larry McIntosh The B&P Cruiser Team relaxing by the Team B&P Burro. Take yer shoes off. Set a spell.

Oh well, I was committed to seeing the goal through. So I hauled ass. To get to the beer. Fun times. The rest of the crew came in sporadically, some in better shape than others. All, ready for the Real Ale.

Post-ride refreshments provided by the fine folks at Real Ale Brewing included Firemans #4 Blonde Ale, Full Moon Rye Pale Ale, Brewhouse Brown Ale and their ESB. Sadly, I didn’t see any Devil’s Backbone Trippel. There was a shuttle taking interested folks over to the brewery for a tour. I did not partake, this time.

The Real Ale Ride benefitted Ronald MacDonald House. Not sure how many riders there were, but there were plenty.

Beef & Pie is an Austin-based film and video production company. They work on everything from the U.S. Air Force to local commercials. Great, fun folks. There is a B&P racing team of serious cyclists, and then there is the Cruiser team – motto being Cruise. Booze. Snooze.

Cheers!

This, our eighth episode of Over a Pint, we filmed LIVE. As in there was less than a 2 second delay from when the awesomeness that spewed from our mouths penetrated your ears.

Yup.

We went to Opal Divine’s for their Go Texas Beer Week.

It was a hella good time.
Our buddy Aaron from CraftAustin came out and helped us keep this live boat a float for the first 15-30 minutes. He was a consistent advocate for the audience as I would stray into self depreciative commentary. Thanks for keeping it pro, Aaron. He was drinking a Southern Star Buried Hatchet. I wish I had tried one of these. I’ll go back later this week for one… cause they’re $2.50 till the 2nd.

As if he weren’t gracious enough, Opal Divine’s owner Michael Parker came on to give us the low down on the event. He revealed that they are serving $3 (THREE DOLLAR!$@#) samplers and also spilled the beans on some special casks (yup, they are taping a cask at each location every night this week at 7 pm).
I am especially excited about the Real Ale Coffee Porter “dry hopped” wt coffee. To my knowledge, this will be tapped at the Freehouse location on Friday. Gah, I could go for one of those right now.

We were especially excited to finally meet Larry, of Twitter fame, @madhouselarry. Larry went to the Great American Beer Festival last weekend and shared some of his experiences with us. It was great to finally meet Larry and we hope to hang out more in the future.

To cap off our live event circus o’beer, we were graced by GABF gold medal winning brewery, Saint Arnold. Frank was on premises to tap a cask of Elissa IPA (YUM!). Frank has been a part of the craft brewing scene in Texas since the 90s (Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, Bill Clinton, Nirvana, Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, the good Home Alone movies, etc.,) and he talked about Opal Divine’s and Austin’s part in creating a craft beer culture in Texas. He also talked up the Divine Reserve series, the “Newery” (new+brewery=newery), and the greatness that is Opal Divine’s Go Texas Beer Week.

So, if you were one of the 10 folks who watched us live, we salute you.

This episode was full of cheers and jeers and all Texas beers. If you can stomach the chopiness of the recorded video from USTREAM, crack open a a TX beer and join us.
And mainly, go out to Opal Divine’s this week and support local beer, or you suck and you should probably have no business on this site.

Love,
Chris

Enjoy!

Part One

Part Two