There's Beer In Texas

For a while I've been talking to various people about going to our favorite breweries around the state of Texas. My summer is dwindling off, and so, therefore, is the opportunity to live the dream. I've solicited a few volunteers, put together a tentative schedule and an info sheet. Tonight I visit the first brewery, Black Star Co-Op, right here in Austin. The way that schedules--mine and theirs (the breweries)--work this is going to be a project for the next few weekends. Because I don't want to spend the next weekends of all of my life, and since this is the first excursion into Texas brewery scouting I'm only checking out a few of the really big ones. Here's what I've found out:

• Independence. Monthly brewery tours. We missed this month so we should go to next month's on Saturday, August 1st.
  
• (512) Does not appear to have brewery tours, but they do have a message announcing some sort of 1 year anniversary party. That would be August 8th, and the sign asks to check back again later for more information .
  
• Live Oak is tiny, and they do have tours, but they aren't regular and only happen by appointment . So this could end up being really cool if they would let us do it.
  
• Black Star Co-Op. Ok. I've heard of this place, but I've never tried their beer. It's an interesting idea. Also, they're having a Beer Social this Saturday that I think we should all go to.
  

There are a few other ones that come up in a google search for Austin Brewery, but I'm not going to put them down here because I think that this local is enough to chew on before we all go out and get esoteric tastes. Also, not possible to do this in a weekend. Which is OK, because we live here.

And now for the road-trip. How possible would this be? 3 Breweries, 2 full days and a friday after work.

• Shiner's website is really dumb and loads slow, so you should thank me for doing this. Oh god. It's so annoying. They actually invite you to 'sit down over a game of checkers and swap stories in the general store.' I don't know if I can drink Shiner anymore. I don't know if I even want to go on the tour anymore, even if it is the 100th anniversary. And they don't have an obvious posting about a brewery tour. They have a shitty virtual tour, which loads slowly because their flash website sucks. 2 hours in the car, according to Google Maps. Free tours weekdays--1800-5-SHINER
• Beautiful contrast. St Arnold knows what's up. They have nice incentives . Lets go to Houston.Tours every Saturday at 1:00. $5 gets you in, plus a pint glass and beer tasting.
• Real Ale , one hour away. Tasting room open Fridays from 2-5 with a tour starting at 4. No listed price. They have a Zappa quote on their home page. Get off of work, we'll go swimming in the Blanco River beforehand.
  

So, I don't know how exactly that would work as a weekend 'tour', exactly. But, I think that if we can get a friday-saturday type thing together for St and Real that would be cool. And we should do that in the near future. Also, we should do these Austin breweries.

A potential schedule for all who dare:

Saturday July 18th--Black Star

Friday and Saturday July 24th & 25th--Real and Arnold

Saturday August 1st--Independence

Saturday August 8th--See what's going on at (512)

And maybe we could ask about Live Oak and throw that in there somewhere too.

I'll post again soon about the results. Oh, and I'm going to take my camera with me, so maybe I can get some pictures into this blog.