American Craft Beer Week in Austin

As I noted, I made a lengthy post on American Craft Beer Week, but Blogger deleted because of some technical issues they were having. Thankfully, an alert reader still had the text saved (minus the links, unfortunately), so I'm cutting and pasting it here. Thanks Brian!

I'm sure there's a lot going on around Austin for American Craft Beer
Week (May 16-22), but here's the three I've been alerted to.

(UPDATE: Black Star Co-op also has some ACBW events. See their calendar here).

First, from the Ginger Man:
We'll be tapping a unique limited-release American Craft Beer each day at 7pm
Monday - (512) Cask-conditioned Cascabel Cream Stout
Tuesday - Real Ale The Kraken (barrel-aged Sisyphus)
Wednesday - Independence Thinker's Ale (from their Brewluminati Series)
Thursday - Sierra Nevada Ovila Dubbel
Friday - St. Arnold Cask-conditioned Divine Reserve 11
Saturday - Real Ale Empire (barrel-aged Lost Gold IPA)
Sunday - Ommegang Gnomegang (collaboration beer with d'Achouffe Brewery)
The second is from Independence Brewing:
Just wanted to give you all a heads up on a cool event we are doing
for American Craft Beer Week . It's called Draught Sessions and it is
a revival of a concept Amy and Rob pioneered when they actually had
time on their hands to do fun things! Really simple concept: live
music and hand-crafted beer at the brewery. We will be doing them at
least quarterly and starting with the next one we will be recording
every session. When we get enough tracks together we will release a
compilation of live tracks from the brewery! May 21st, doors at 7pm
music promptly at 730. $10 gets you in the door and each 21+ guest can
sample up to 3 16oz brews free of charge! Hope to see you all there!
The third is from the Draught House:
Hello craft beer fans,
ACBW (May 16th-22nd) is almost upon us and though we've been late to
get it together, we have a few things happening.

Monday the 16th- Cheese pairing with Real Ale Lost Gold (free with
beer) + tapping of Ranger Creek Cabernet Barrel Aged Mesquite Smoked
Porter
Tuesday- Free glass available with purchase of Boulevard Single Wide
(randallized with El Dorado hops), Wheat or Tank Seven. Brewery rep.
on hand sampling Boss Toms Bock.
Wednesday- Glass available with purchase of Southern Star Walloon,
Pro-Am Smoked Porter, Bombshell Blond or Creme Brulee Buried Hatchet.
ALSO, tapping of Maui Imperial CoCoNut PorTer, made with cocoa nibs.
Thursday- Ommegang glass free with purchase of Gnomegang or Rare Vos.
Free cheese sample with Rare Vos. The brewery rep. will also be
sampling Hennepin.
Friday- Left Hand Brewing Co. will debut Sawtooth Nitro to Texas + get
a free glass with Sawtooth, Milk Stout or TNT Weizenbock, Free cheese
sample with Sawtooth and the brewery rep. will be sampling Stranger
Pale Ale. PLUS for Firkin Friday we will tap a cask of Jester King
Black Metal.
Saturday- Austin Beerworks first tapping. The brewery boys from up
Burnet (sorry) will have their first beer to sell and be here to
answer questions about their wares. Come out and taste Austin's newest
beers!

Antonelli's Cheese Shop pairs cheese for us. If you like their work,
check out their shop on Duval. They have an amazing selection.

Also, this Firkin Friday (the 13th) we will tap Southern Star Creme Brulee.

Well, crap. Thanks, Blogger.

I had a post with lots of stuff about American Craft Brewing Week on here. But Blogger had some sort of malfunction and deleted it, as well as some other posts that I had scheduled to post over the next few days. Sorry about that. If I have time over the weekend (and I probably won't), I'll try to recreate them and re-post.

HB 660 Is Dead, HB 602 Hits a Hurdle

I'm really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but brace yourself: House Bill 660 is dead. And HB 602 is in trouble.

HB 660 is the bill in the Texas Legislature that would have allowed Texas brewpubs to sell their beer off-premises. Right now, they can only sell at the pub — a frustrating situation, since out-of-state brewpubs can bottle their product, send it to a distributor, and get it on store shelves in Texas, while Texas brewpubs cannot. As Scott Metzger of Freetail Brewing, one of the leaders of the HB 660 movement, told me: "If I wanted to increase the reach of my beer in Texas, the best thing for me to do is move out of Texas."

The bill is stuck in committee due to completely idiotic opposition from the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas (WBDT), which so fears any change to Texas' "three-tier" system — which mandates legal separation between producers, distributors, and retailers — that they're willing to kill a bill that would bring them more business. (A more sensible distributor group, the Beer Alliance of Texas, supported the bill.)

At this point, being stuck in committee is a death sentence — the official deadline for House bills to get out of committee was Monday. That's because the legislative session ends May 31, and there wouldn't be time between now and then to move the bill through the House, then through the Senate committee, and then through the Senate, and then through conference committee. (The Texas Lege only meets for 140 days every two years.) The only hope left now is to attach the bill as an amendment to another bill, and a spokesman for HB 660 author Rep. Mike Villarreal told me that he doesn't anticipate that happening.

Now, for the bad but not-yet-tragic news: HB 602 is in a bad place. That's the bill that would allow Texas microbreweries to kinda-sorta "sell" their product on-premises. As I've explained before, the bill wouldn't really allow retail sales, but would allow up to a 12-pack of beer to be given away to visitors at the end of a paid-admission brewery tour, thus technically preserving the three-tier separation and procuring WBDT support. But also to get WBDT support, the bill was amended in House committee to limit this privilege to brewers who produce no more than 75,000 barrels a year. That change, unfortunately, has brought opposition from another big power in the beer world: Anheuser-Busch, which feels the law discriminates against them. The bill has been left pending in Senate committee while the involved parties haggle things out.

I'll have a more detailed report on the HB 602 situation tomorrow in the News section of The Austin Chronicle.

(UPDATE: The Chronicle report is here.)

(photo copyright Lee Nichols)

Best Convenience Store for Beer (Austin)

Hey Austinites I'm curious: What Austin convenience store do you think has the best beer selection? Yes, I already know about Whip-In. And the Sunrise Mini-Mart on Anderson (which is near my house). And of course, I'm aware of Hyde Park Market. So what else you got? Let me know in the comments section.

Rules:

• I'm only interested in the Austin area.
• Only convenience stores, not liquor stores or supermarkets.
  

Twisted X Won Me Over

I was pretty skeptical about Twisted X, the new brewery based in Cedar Park (an Austin suburb). Their focus is Mexican-style beers, which is not my first choice. But I checked out their debut party at the Dig Pub last week, and I admit it — I'm impressed. Even by the jalapeño-flavored beer. No, seriously. I'll have more on this soon in my Austin Chronicle "Beer Flights" column. (Pictured: Twisted X owners Jim Sampson and Shane Bordeau.)

Weedwacker Returns Today

Press release from Saint Arnold:

Saint Arnold Weedwacker Returns to Taps Today, in Bottles in June

HOUSTON, May 9, 2011 – Saint Arnold Brewing Company (www.saintarnold.com), the oldest craft brewery in Texas, today announced the return of Saint Arnold Weedwacker. A cousin of the brewery’s top-selling Fancy Lawnmower Beer, Saint Arnold Weedwacker debuted in August 2010 as the inaugural brew in Saint Arnold’s Movable Yeast series. The limited supply of Weedwacker was greeted with strong demand and quickly sold out.

While Weedwacker features Bavarian hefeweizen yeast, it is not a classic hefeweizen. It is exactly the same recipe as Fancy Lawnmower Beer, a Kölsch, except for the yeast. Both are brewed with pale malted barley and a dash of malted wheat. The brewery uses imported pils and wheat malts to create the light yet rich malt body followed by four separate additions of Hallertauer Hersbrucker hops. Weedwacker is Saint Arnold’s first unfiltered year-round beer, pouring a hazy blonde. The Bavarian hefeweizen yeast gives the beer a pleasant clove spiciness and a hint of banana.

Saint Arnold Weedwacker will be available on tap (starting today) and in 12-ounce bottles (in early June) sold in six-packs and cases throughout Texas.

The introduction of Saint Arnold Weedwacker to the brewery’s lineup of year-round beers will coincide with the retirement of Saint Arnold Texas Wheat, supplies of which are expected to be available through May. Originally known as Saint Arnold Kristall Weizen, Saint Arnold Texas Wheat has been part of the brewery’s core beer lineup since shortly after opening in 1994. The recipe was tweaked and the beer renamed in 2005, but has remained a small part of the brewery’s overall product mix.

“While we would love to just keep adding beers, we also considered the production logistical issues, limited shelf space as well as how to ensure that all of our beers in the market are fresh.,” said Saint Arnold Founder/Brewer Brock Wagner. “Our conclusion was it would be best to stop Texas Wheat production. We understand that we have disappointed some fans of this beer, but we hope that having Weedwacker will more than make up for that.”

Saint Arnold Weedwacker joins top-selling Saint Arnold Fancy Lawnmower Beer, Saint Arnold Elissa IPA, Saint Arnold Amber Ale and Saint Arnold Brown Ale in the brewery’s core year-round beer lineup. The brewery also has five seasonal beers, periodically releases single-batch offerings of its Saint Arnold Divine Reserve series and tweaks its existing beer recipes with different yeast to create new beers as part of its Moveable Yeast series.

'A Perfect 90-Minute Beer'

No, not Dogfish Head. This is funny.