Children Seeing Beer

In a fairly mundane article about whether or not it was a Virginia state law to put six packs of beer in a plastic bag (It's not. It's store policy.), I came across a brain numbing sentence. Raj Gupta, a Seven-Eleven franchise owner has a policy that all beer be bagged for several reasons, including "that it prevents minors from seeing people carrying alcohol".

Dude, if you're that concerned, stop selling alcohol!

Want to Invest in a Brewery?

While Satan sits, hesitating, on the fence about opening his own brewery, more and more people are taking advantage of Kickstarter to get their breweries off the ground. The latest brewery to try it is Lucky Town Brewing, who hopes to be Mississippi's second brewery.

Lucas, Chip, Brandon & Angela want to tap (pardon the pun) into the growing craft beer market in Jackson, and want to offer local artists and musicians studios and practice rooms until they can afford their own. They also plan to be on the forefront of the effort to change Mississippi beer laws. Both laudable goals, in my opinion.

So if you want to stick it to The Man, head on over to Lucky Town Brewing's Kickstarter page and read all about their plans and their beers (“Stout of the Rising Sun” and "What the Elf?"), then go on and donate.

Beer can save the world!

"It Tastes of Beef"

The Brandling Villa pub in South Gosforth, Newcastle, England has a special menu for dogs, and with it a beer made specially for dogs. The Menu includes "Chicken a la Franc" - a dog version of chicken chasseur; "Eggs Ladybird" named after the chef's dog; and a Sunday roast with "cat" gravy (That's beef stock with fish sauce. No cats were harmed in the making of the dish.)

The beer, called Dog Beer, is made with malt and hops, but also includes meat extract.  The manager pronounced it revolting, after sampling some before giving to his dog.  The dog didn't like it either.

This isn't the first doggie beer.  Bowser Beer is made in Arizona (with beef or chicken broth and malted barley but without hops, which are toxic to dogs).

Shiner Wild Hare Pale Ale

For 103 years, Spoetzl Brewery has only made lagers. Until now.

Wild Hare Pale Ale has arrived, joining an ever grown line of innovative beers.  According the press release:

Shiner Wild Hare is a classic American Pale Ale made with American two-row barley with a blend of Munich and Caramel malts for rich malt flavor and clear amber color. US Golding and Bravo hop varieties are used in the kettle and fermenter for crisp bitterness and assertive fresh hop fruit and floral aroma. More than a pound of hops is used to produce each barrel of Shiner Wild Hare.

I've never tried Bravo hops, but according to this site, they are a high Alpha hop, 14-17%. And they have been used in many of my favorite West Coast Pale Ales.

The hophead in me is excited by this. I can't wait until February 3, the release date. And I have to factor in the inevitable lag between the beer is available in Austin and when the local distributor finally allows us to have some Wild Hare here in Paradise, but that's another post.

Anyway, although this is the first ale that Spoetzl has brewed it is not the first beer with the word "ale" on the label. Some of their stronger beers in the past have been labeled as ales thanks to state labeling laws. This is a true ale, made with top fermenting yeast.

I Wish Senator Shumar was My Senator!

New York Senator Charles Schumer recently launched his "I Love NY Brew" Campaign inspired his trips across the state visiting the many craft breweries.

"...it was easy to see that craft brewing is actually one of our fastest growing industries in upstate New York and Long Island. . . I'm announcing a brand new initiative called the 'I Love NY Brew' campaign, to help get local brews on local shelves and into local menus. This is a call to restaurants, bars, convenience and fuel stores statewide to sell our locally brewed beer."

Schumer said he is going to ask the New York State Restaurant Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores to carry locally brewed beer, will be working with the New York State Brewers Association to help promote small breweries create jobs in the state.

The project won't have a budget, and will run by word of mouth out of Schumer's office.

Wouldn't it be great if Texas had such a forward thinking legislator; someone who wants to grow jobs in the state and collect more tax revenue?

T-Shirts in Beer Drinker Sizes

I have found very few Texas breweries that sell shirts in beer drinker sizes (3XL and up). I picked up a couple at Stone Brewing back in June. A few years ago, I bought one from Bright Brewing in Eola.  I think he made a mistake ordering.  He hasn't had a XXXL since.

Apparently, brewers don't see that many fat people around the breweries. . .

(Of course it matters how the shirts are cut.  I have a couple of XXL shirts that fit well.)

Pre-Prohibition Beer Culture

Reader Zack Pilgrim emailed me and asked about Ice Houses, and wondered what beer his Great-greatgrandfather would have been drinking when he lived in the Texas Hill Country. He wondered what the beer culture was like. After some thought, here's what I wrote:


In the days before Prohibition, there were three basic types of venues that sold beer: saloons, ice houses, and Biergartens.

Saloons only sold beer, and were male only establishments. In most Texas towns, like Fredericksburg, San Angelo, had several saloons on the main street. San Angelo had 12 on Concho Street, Fredericksburg had ten. Basically, one on every block. In San Angelo, the owner of the Star Saloon was Hubert Wolters, who sold beer from his brewery in the saloon until the railroad came to town, and he started selling Pabst. In Fredericksburg, when Lone Star and Pearl came to town, because of the economy of scale, they sold for a nickel a glass, while the much smaller Probst brewery was being sold at a dime a glass. That "beer war" is probably what caused the brewery to close.

I think the reason there were so many saloons, was that everyone walked everywhere. In Fredericksburg, there were four butcher shops along Main Street, several grocery stores, and hardware stores. They all catered to the folks who lived a few blocks away.

So after a hard day at work--hard manual labor, remember--they would stop in at the saloon on their way home. They would have a couple of beers with their neighbor before heading home to the wife. I heard a story from a gentleman in his late 60s who told me his grandfather had a bucket in the chicken coop from one of the saloons. His grandfather would be sent to the saloon for a refill for his father. When the saloon closed, they made it a feed bucket.

Ice houses were the 19th century equivalent of a convenience store and were primarily in South Texas. Before electricity, they sold ice and food for the neighborhood. You needed ice for the old ice boxes. My dad says the one his mom had kept ice a week. In the evening, instead of sitting in a hot house, folks would sit out under the trees and gossip and drink beer. In the late 1800s, Ice houses were likely tied houses, and only sold one brand of beer. So Great-Greatgranpa Kurz probably drank Lone Star (owned by Augustus Busch but NOT a Budweiser brewery) or Pearl. If there was a railroad in town, maybe Pabst, Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz or Lemp.

The West Alabama Ice House in Houston was on "How The States Got Their Shapes."Today, they only sell beer. And they still sit out under the oak trees and visit with their neighbors. There are a lot of places that call themselves, but I think the only places that can be called ice houses are places that once sold blocks of ice.

In Fredericksburg, where I live, there were four ice houses in town in the 60-70s: Lakeway Ice House, 87 Ice House, 290 Ice House, and Tower Ice house. They were more bar like, though they all had big freezer doors on the sidewalk. By the time I turned 18 (the legal drinking age) in 1980, The Tower Ice House had closed. I went to Lakeway, because it was near my house. It was more of a bar by then. Today only 87 Ice House is open, and they advertise themselves as more of a sports bar. I haven't been there in years.

I have seen a book about Texas Ice Houses. Here's the link for the Amazon page. It lists some of the still existing ice houses, including the ones that I don't consider ice houses.

Another type of business catered to big city beer drinkers: Biergartens. There were large biergartens in all the major cities. Frank Lloyd Wright designed Midway Gardens in Chicago, for example. The biergartens were family affairs. A way to spend a day outside of your hot home. In Austin, there was Pressler's Biergarten on the Colorado River, on the east side of town. There were several pavillions, one for families, one with alligator wrestling, one with a brass band, and more! Before TV and radio, that's how Austinites entertained themselves. The only remnant of Pressler Biergarten is Pressler Street in the city park along Lady Bird Lake. Scholtz's Garten still exists in Austin, a few blocks north of the capital. Now it's more a restaurant.