Saturday, May 06, 2006

Independent brewery

Today we toured Independence Brewing Company, one of the few independent beer brewers in the state. This guy started as a homebrewer and then started brewing professionally at the (now defunct) Coppertank Brewpub. A few years ago he started his own brewery. Currently Independence is available only around Austin.

Normally they aren't open to the public, but on the first Saturday of each month they have a brewery tour. Actually it's more of an open house. People show up and receive three drink tickets, which happens to coincide with the number of beers they brew. We tried the Independence Pale Ale, but we thought it was a bit too hoppy for our tastes. The Bootlegger Brown Ale was a bit too malty for me, but Doug liked it. I settled on the Freestyle Wheat Beer, which I thought was pretty good despite the fact that I normally don't like wheat beer.

The brewery was basically a big loading dock. They opened the dock doors to let everyone in, and had a half-dozen wooden picnic tables. They also had a bar area. The back half of the dock was where the brewing equipment was. It was interesting. Also hanging around the brewery was Jasper, the brew dog. He made sure to check that everyone was having a good time.

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