It’s time for another Summer Pils pub crawl brought to you by our friends at Saint Arnold. We had a great time last year and even got to make fun of craftaustin for wearing jeans out to a pub crawl in the middle of the summer. So grab your bleach stained shorts and some comfortable shoes, it looks like this pub crawl will include some walking! We’ll see you out there.

(Oh, and please disregard the bars listed on the ticket in the image, those were from Pub Crawl #2)

From Saint Arnold…

Saint Arnold Afternoon Austin Pub Crawl, this Saturday, April 9

We will utilize our “open house” schedule for the first 3 stops. This means that we will be signing tickets at all of the first three stops for three hours so you can enjoy a beer at each one with only a quarter of the people crammed into each establishment. You will get your ticket at whichever stop you decide to visit first. But, VERY IMPORTANT, we will only be handing out the tickets between 3 PM and 4 PM. Thus, you still need to start between 3 and 4. Then, at 6 PM, everybody will gather at one final stop and that is where we will award the prize.

The prize for making all four stops will be our newly designed Pub Crawl pint glass! And as always, designated drivers are both eligible for the award and encouraged to attend. Also, some locations will have a limited amount of Divine Reserve No. 11!

So here is the layout and our vague directions:

The first three stops:
A little bar full of LOVE and JOY! Think Neches river.
A ‘SKINNY’ little ballroom on San Jacinto/2nd St;
Is it GINGER or Maryann?

The final stop:
At 6:00 we’ll head west to a DIVINE place near Rio Grande, where we will have beer upstairs and downstairs.

Remember that cash is helpful, be kind to your waitstaff, and always, always appear in public enjoying a Saint Arnold. We hold those that arrange for transportation to and from or use designated drivers in the highest regard!

UPDATE:

Draft Locations

Tuesday- Dig Pub, Whip In, Draught House, Homefield Grill

Thursday- Saucer, Ginger Man

Friday- Billy’s on Burnet, Black Star Co-op

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So this showed up in my inbox.

Let the hunt begin.

Central Market S
Central Market N
Chris’ Liquor-S. Lamar
Whole Foods S
Whole Foods N
Whip In
Spec’s 290
Spec’s Airport
Spec’s Arbor Walk
Spec’s S.Park Mdw.
Spec’s Rrk
Spec’s BeeCaves
Gabriel’s San Marcos
HEB #68 Slaughter
HEB #425 Hancock
HEB #404 Bee Caves/71
HEB #29 Westlake
HEB #428 Brodie
HEB #451-RR620
HEB #580 Parmer/1431
HEB #591-Palm Vly
Wheatsville
Fresh Plus #1 (W.Lynn)
Wiggy’s
Farm to Market
Junior’s
Live Oak Market
Hyde Park Mini Mart
Reuben’s-Stassney
East End Wines
Thom’s Market
Twin Galleria
Twin-Hancock
Barton Hills Mkt-S. Lamar
Oak Hill Liquor

As you know this week there’s a thing called SXSW in town- you may like it or you may not; but we can all agree everyone loves a free party and free beer!

Especially Texas Craft Beer!
For you out of towners welcome to Austin, and try our beers!!!! Here is a breakdown of the craft beer parties in town- I have not looked up whether you need a badge/rsvp or not so please check the link!

I believe most are free. We hope to see you guys around town and definitely at these parties! There are lots of parties going on some I have not even listed or probably know about; so feel free to comment if you know of anything else.
Please be on the look out for the Austin Beer Guide also! .

Again, hope everyone has a save SX and stay hydrated cause there’s plenty of beer in this town!

Come meet, tweet, greet, drink, with us and a fair share of the Internet on Thursday at Opal Divine’s Freehouse.

We’re teaming up with our frienemy Craft Austin and our Pacific Northwest buddies at Taplister to pull together some of the greatest tweeters/drinkers (twinkers? twunkards?) across the World Wide Web to really put our livers and thumbs to the test.

Also present for the nerdery, brewers or brewery folk from Saint Arnold, Independence, Live Oak, Real Ale, (512) Brewing Co, Jester King, Ranger Creek, Thirsty Planet, South Austin Brewing Co, Hops & Grain and maybe a few more if we can wrangle them in for this.

And maybe I heard that Austin Beer Guide thing all the cool kids are talking about may show up, too.

RSVP and/or share with a friend.

See you Thursday.

#BTBTwunkards

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!

image from craft austin (via @SaintArnold)

A friend of mine emailed me this morning with something of interest.

Saint Arnold is planning to bring back Divine Reserve 9, an Imperial Pumpkin Stout, as a seasonal starting next year. This is fantastic.

The news comes second hand from the Houston beer blog Barley Vine, who was lucky enough to attend the vertical tasting of all the previously released beers in the Divine Reserves series. Towards the end of the tasting Brock Wagner, the owner and co-founder of Saint Arnold, announced the return of DR9 as a yearly seasonal arriving in the Fall of 2011. Lennie Ambrose, who you may remember from such films as The Austin Scavenger Hunt Pub Crawl, was quick to confirm the announcement. And beer lovers everywhere rejoiced, or at least, they will once they hear the news.

For anyone unfortunate enough to have missed this release, here is some basic information courtesy of the Saint Arnold website:

Reserve No. 9 Imperial Pumpkin Stout

Original Gravity: 1.101

Final Gravity: 1.020

Alcohol: 11% ABV

Description:

Important: let this beer warm to at least 50° before enjoying.  This beer is black with some ruby highlights.  The nose is full of pumpkin pie spices and some alcohol.  There are notes of nutmeg, caraway and vanilla.  The taste starts with chocolate malt with a hint of spice and rolls into a warm spicy alcohol taste which has the effect of creating the balance that usually comes from the hop bitter.  There is some hop bitter on the finish, but not much.  Overall, this beer finishes relatively dry for such a big beer.  As it warms, the spices move forward in the taste and the chocolate moves to the finish.  The pumpkin provides a pleasant undertone and a nice mouthfeel.  The spices will probably fade some over time; they mellowed considerably while still in the fermenter.

This has been a great year for the Houston based brewery. They moved to a new and much larger facility, recently expanded their brewing capacity and are now announcing a stellar addition to their seasonal line up. We’ll leave you with a video from the Saint Arnold Brewhouse Blog of former brewer Bobby Mullins adding the pumpkin into the 2009 batch of DR9.

Leave it up the HEB crew to host a beer celebration that coincides with Octoberfest. One could argue this being a case of good timing or simply a mere coincidence. Regardless, both Central Market stores in Austin (and at other stores in Texas) are sponsoring a fantastic event for beer snots and newbies alike – branded Brewtopia.

The event takes place from September 22 – October 2 and features both Texas-based and national brews. Some of the events will be hosted by Central Market staffers who will be offering various tastings from a single brewery to actual brewers being on-hand in the store handing out samples – how fun is that?  Any way you slice this pie, something tells me I will be in the Central Market stores often over the next few weeks. Below is a preview of the official tastings by location, date and time. Some noteworthy events to keep an eye on:

In addition to these (mostly) free beer tastings, there are also private events featuring food pairings with a brewery for a fee. Some examples include Sierra Nevada, Saint Arnold, and Magic Hat. These events are being hosted at the Central Market North store in their Cooking School area featuring chefs pairing various courses of freshly prepared food with different beers from a brewery. Did I mention you get to meet a brewer or owner?  All of the details, including menus and beer flights, can be found here.

I tip my hat to Central Market for facilitating these events. It offers a great way to sample a lot of different styles of beer from a legitimate line up of breweries. If this event doesn’t tempt you to put down the Bud Light, nothing will.

Weedwacker sitings:

So far we only know of it being on at Billy’s on Burnet and Draught House.

Leave any other siting locations in the comments!

Anyone had it yet? How is it?

Holla!

More bold text and exclamation marks!!!!!

UPDATE: Just got word from Frank at Saint Arnold that due to shipping issues, only half the kegs got to Austin last week. The rest will be here this week. Will let you know if we see any.

—————————

Had a chance to visit Saint Arnold’s “newery” earlier this summer when passing through Houston on a Thursday as we headed to the beach.

Let me begin by saying we started visiting the old Saint Arnold brewery when we lived in Houston in 2004. It had its charms – sweating it out on a hot August day in a warehouse, making friends waiting in line for the office bathroom, not paying (that only lasted so long), and fighting less crowds. Going to the newery kind of made me miss it.

However, I can see why they are excited about the new digs. Air conditioning, his and her restrooms, expanded tasting room, fermenters behind closed doors far away from tipsy tour goers, and (most importantly), more room for brewing and expansion. Good for the Texas beer scene.

We took a 3:00 p.m. tour. They close at 5:00 and it flew by. I only used all four of my beer tokens by sticking primarily with the tasting glass. Brock showed off the space to about 20 or so of us that took the tour, including a bus of retirees. Ahh, can’t wait for those golden years!

It was a big day at the brewery when we were there. Oktoberfest had just begun being brewed recently and it was the first day they were brewing Weedwacker, the first beer in their “Movable Yeast” program. Weedwacker is their Fancy Lawnmower fermented with Bavarian hefeweizen yeast. Like a hefeweizen, it will not be filtered. It is scheduled to be realeased August 16, so get excited.

Speaking of Weedwacker (that’s why you’re reading this, right?), go and get yourself some when it hits town. It should be at a bar not too far from you. Try it next to a Lawnmower. Then go try it on cask.

Billy’s (cask)
Dig Pub (Cask)
Draught House
Flying Saucer
Ginger Man (cask)
Homefield Grill
Lovejoy’s
Opal Divine’s (all locations)
Red’s Porch
Zax (cask)

Round Rock’s HomeField Grill will be hosting their first ever beer pairing dinner August 19th.

Seems like these beer dinners are popping up all over the place these days. Fine by me.

Looks like they have a pretty solid line up of beers. I’ve never been, but I’ve been in contact with their resident beer guru and he knows his stuff.

Five courses, five nice beers. Also they will have the Saint Arnold Weedwacker of the Moveable Yeast program.

More info:

Get tix and more info here.

I believe I will be there.

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.