And this week, it’s time to celebrate everything that is great about craft beer!

Here’s a brief list of what we’ve got going on this week;

Tuesday; Pint Night at the Snack Bar.  Starts at 7:00.  First 70 people to by an H&G pint get to keep the sweet logo glassware that it came in.

Thursday; First tapping happy hour for our collaboration with Women.Design.Build.  In the H&G tap room starting at 6:00.

Friday; In-store tasting at HEB on Slaughter and Escarpment.  We’ll have free samples of our Alt-eration and Pale Dog and some schwag to give away to the first 25 people that drop by and say hi.

Friday; Special tapping in the tap room during our regular tap room hours, 2-6pm

Saturday; More special tappings in the tap room during our regular tap room hours, 12-4pm

Also, check out the Brewers Association website for the full calendar of events both in TX and around the country.  Search out local beer, support the fine folks that dedicate their days and nights to crafting it for you and introduce a friend to craft beer.  Do it for yourself, for your community and for your taste buds!

Cheers to craft beer!

So last week Adler and I closed down the brewery, sent over a few pallets of beer to our distributor and hopped on a plane bound for San Diego.  Every year the fine folks at the Brewers Association organize and orchestrate one of the finest conferences that I’ve ever attended.  For 4 straight days we get to surround ourselves with like minded folks from around the world to learn, imbibe, network and enjoy an all around kick-ass time.

Every other year the World Beer Cup takes place as a culmination to the Craft Brewers Conference.  This year over 3,000 craft beer folks were in attendance and we were treated to endless amounts of craft beer from around the world and a killer menu put together from the genius minds behind the Monks Kettle in San Francisco.

We had an absolute blast hearing from vendors and industry peers about the latest and greatest happenings in the world of fermentation and digging deeper into the intricacies of our craft.  Being surrounded by men and women that share a common passion and a common goal of bringing more attention to the wonderful art of making beer is truly inspirational.  We’re not in it for the money and we’re definitely not in it for the fame.  That being said, I think we all felt like celebrities during our stay in San Diego.  Being able to tell people that we make beer for a living and hearing the words “that sounds awesome” or “sounds like the best job ever” is a nice reassurance that what we are doing isn’t going unnoticed or unappreciated.

The craft beer culture in San Diego is pretty damn cool as well and it was really nice to sample beers that we may never see in Texas.  We got to visit a few breweries, ate at a few killer restaurants and a few of us enjoyed a morning run to prep our metabolism for the feasts of the day.

And the best part of the week, winning a Gold medal for our Alt-eration at the World Beer Cup just 6 months since we began producing beer and opened our doors to the good people of Austin!  Also, not a bad way to meet Charlie Papazian for the first time

Come join us in our tap room every Friday from 2-6 and Saturday from 12-4.  We’ve always got something new that we’re growing in the Greenhouse and plenty of Alt-eration!

-First up, Greenhouse India Brown Lager, or IBL if you’re savvy with acronymology.  This is a self admittedly strange concoction of a brew.  We took the hop bill from our Greenhouse IPA with a touch more Columbus and paired it to a rich, brown, chocolaty, 7% ABV lager.  Without the signature fruitiness delivered by our house ale yeast, the IBL showcases much more of the raw components of the hops.  A touch maltier than your standard IPA but still balanced well with a 70 IBU hop load.  Full of Summit and Columbus hops, this beer is rich, dank and resinous.   We thought that would make it a perfect beer to tap on Friday in the tap room, which also happens to be 4/20, which also happens to be a nice coincidence. Come out and join us from 2-6 for free samples and rad merchandise to drink your samples from.

If you can’t make it to the tap room you can join us on west 6th St. with our friends at House + Earth for a Green Business Mixer and Earth Day Celebration! We’ll have our Alt-eration and Pale Dog pouring and plenty of other fun things to do.  Check out the details here,  http://www.austinearthday.com/

Coming next on the Greenhouse is our take on a pale lager affectionately known as The One They Call Zoe, beautifully malty but still crisp and hopped with American grown Mt. Hood hops.  This recipe has been a long work in progress and so far we are incredibly happy with the progress.  We’ll be releasing this beer on April 28th for an event that we are hosting at the brewery to benefit our friends from EcoAustin and the Town Lake Trail Foundation.  More details on the event here

Getting green and grinning from ear to ear!

You see we’ve gotten pretty comfortable with ourselves over on east 6th St.  We don’t see many folks during the week and definitely don’t haven’t had anyone accompany us on the days that we brew.  But this particular day was different, and we couldn’t have been happier to be joined by our good friend Jake Maddux from Thirsty Planet Brewing Co.  We’ve gotten to know the good folks at Thirsty Planet over the past year and Jake and I have been discussing the concept of a collaboration for some time.  I mean let’s face it, we drink together, have dinner together and converse together so why shouldn’t we try brewing together.  We couldn’t think of a good reason not to, so the Common Denominator was born.

Fast forward a few hours and we have managed ourselves into a pretty solid brew day.  As a brewer you have little quirks that are hard for most people to understand, let alone involve themselves in.  Attention to detail is important but even more so than that is attention to a process.  Having a basic understanding of brewing science helps, a willingness to look past personal hygiene at times is also helpful but more than anything, brewing is a game of improvisation.

In the spirit of that improvisational nature we decided to determine our grain bill after we all arrived at the brewery, whilst standing in the grain room.  It was probably quite a sight for an outsider looking in but it all felt comfortable at 7:00 AM on a random weekday.  Ideas flew around, concepts discussed and processes analyzed.  And after 10 minutes or so, it was set.  It would be an imperial brown ale.  Starting with a base of 2-Row Pale Malt followed by large amounts of Vienna and Munich then followed by 2 specialty Belgian malts and finished with just a dusting of Roasted Barley.  We produced, through a moderately complex mashing schedule, a beautiful wort that was rich with fermentable sugars and held just enough dextrin to keep up the mouthfeel.  We decided to use Czech Saaz hops throughout the boil in an attempt to provide a very enticing spicy aroma and a clean, crisp, classy bitterness.  The real star of the show was the Belgian/Trappist yeast blend and we didn’t want to overpower the ester compliments by too much hop flavor and aroma.  We filled a 3 bbl fermenter with a classy 18 Plato wort and over the course of the next 10 days, and a roller coaster of hands-off fermentation temperature control, would watch it take itself down to 2 Plato.  Just to mix things up we decided to dry-hop with American Cascade hops to provide a mild citrus component with touches of pine and resin.

And in the end we created what is the beginning of many collaborations coined “Common Denominator”!

Enough talk, I’m sure you’re wondering where you might be able to try our little experiment in grammatical and Zymurgical pursuits. We’ll be holding the first tapping this Friday, 3/30 with our good friends over at drink.well.  If you haven’t made it out to drink.well yet then you are in for a treat. Mike and Jessica Sanders opened the doors to this American Pub a few weeks back and haven’t had an empty seat in the house since.  Both Jake and I will be on hand to answer any questions about facial hair or standard algebraic equations and the staff from drink.well will be there to show you a kick-ass time.

Please join us as we embark on an adventure of collaboration, beer will be served starting at 6:00PM followed by tappings on Saturday at each breweries tasting room during normal Saturday hours.  Hops & Grain from 12-4pm and Thirsty Planet from 11-3 pm.

See you Friday!

Fast forward 8 years and I’m sitting in the brewery, running a CIP cycle on the Greenhouse and enjoying a barrel aged Old Rasputin, nice little Wednesday.  Our team of 2 has been staying very busy over the past few months.  We’re currently making as much beer as our brewery will allow, waiting patiently on some of our barrel aging projects to reach maturity and giddy with excitement about the new ones we are just beginning.  We’ve started to sell our two year round beers in 12 oz. cans.  As we speak our Pale Dog is available at both Whole Foods locations, both Central Market locations, Wheatsville Co-op and HEB at Slaughter and Escarpment.  We can all of our beers with a manual two station filling machine.  At top speed we can package close to a case of beer every 5 minutes, pretty slow going.  We’ll start distributing the Alt-eration by the end of the week, most likely to the same places that received the Pale Dog.  We are anxiously awaiting the 3 new 30 bbl tanks that should arrive in June as well as an additional 3 bbl fermenter and bright tank for the Greenhouse!

The Greenhouse has been hard at work as well, pumping out batch after batch of experimental beers.  We brewed a Barleywine back in February and will be splitting the batch between a French Oak Cabernet barrel and a Makers Mark Bourbon barrel.  Since the Greenhouse produces around 100 gallons of beer per batch we should have just enough to fill both barrels.  We’ve been aging a few Jim Beam bourbon barrels with our Pale Dog since December and they are starting to develop well.  The barrels were lacking in bourbon character but contributed plenty of oak.  Next we’ll inoculate both of them with a cocktail of wild yeast and bacteria and let them get funky for a year or more.  We just received a shipment of 6 French Oak Cabernet barrels and 4 Makers Mark Bourbon barrels.   One of each will go to the Barleywine and the rest will be split amongst the Alt-eration and Pale Dog.  And a few of these will get some love from the aforementioned cocktail of critters.

We’ve also got s0me big news that we can’t yet tell you.  Should be rad and awesome and fantastic, but you’ll have to wait to find out what it is.  We’v got to figure it out first…

-Early Feb we brewed the first attempt at Ruta Maya Dark, a black lager made with cold brewed Ruta Maya Coffee.  We also received label approval for the 12 oz. cans that we’ll be ordering in the next 4-6 weeks to house this little breakfast delight.  This’ll be our 3rd year round beer and available only in cans.

-Mid-Feb we received our first glimpse at what our cans were going to look like printed on aluminum, sweet candy.

-Later Mid-Feb we took a trip to Conroe, TX to see the full production run of our Alt-eration and Pale Dog cans, and we all got to wear hair nets, ear plugs and a bright orange vest, coolest day of my life and it’s written all over my face, especially in that first picture, wow

-Two days later we received a truck load of pallets.  Aforementioned truck was 1.5 feet taller than our loading dock and consequently 1.5 feet too tall to unload directly into the brewery.  Plan B involved a rented Bobcat, an intense tricep workout trying to squeeze the delicate pallets into our building and close to 3 years lost from my life.  All in all, success.

-This week will see our first cases of cans being packaged.  Once we’ve tested our seaming mechanism and feel comfortable with it, we’ll send them out the door!

-We also just placed an order for 3 more 30 bbl fermenters as well as 2 more 3 bbl Greenhouse fermenters.  We should see these tanks in June or July and with their arrival will come a doubling of our current fermentation capacity, double sweet candy.

Last thing, don’t forget that our tap room is open every Friday from 2-6pm and Saturday 12-4pm.  Tours of our facility are included with the purchase of a fancy souvenir glass and are conducted at 1, 2 and 3:00ish, ONLY ON SATURDAY.   If you just so happen to be over 21 years of age and are thirsty, samples of our beers are free for you.  Rad

We’ll be shutting down the tasting room on Friday and Saturday as we head out to Huntsville to cheer for Mrs. Hops & Grain as she runs the marathon! 26.2 miles of greatness!

But we’ll be back and OPEN on Sunday 2/12 from 12-6pm.  Our good friends from the famous Peached Tortilla food trailer will be at the brewery launching their newest food truck, Yume Burger!

Straight from the source-

Yumé Burger is Austin’s premier Japanese burger truck and the sister concept to Eater Austin’s 2011 Food Truck of the Year, the peached tortilla.  Our focus is to adapt Japanese flavor profiles to the American gourmet burger, all while operating as a kitchen on wheels.  Specialities will include the JapaJam burger (all beef hamburger, Japanese tomato jam, fried egg, Japanese BBQ sauce, crispy onion strings) and the Tempura Fish burger (tempura tilapia, Asian slaw, wasabi mayo, Japanese tartar sauce, Japanese pickles featuring Hops & Grain beer in the tempura batter).

And yes, you read that correctly. They’ll be using our Pale Dog in the tempura batter, nice!

Come join us from 12-6 for tasty beer hand-crafted in east Austin and fantastic food!  Everyone over 21 will receive tickets for free samples and we’ll have pint glasses and tasting glasses for sale, $10 and $5 respectively.

Check out the event page HERE!

January is off to a great start around the H&G HQ.  If you haven’t made it out to our Friday and Saturday tasting room hours, it’s time.  Seriously, we are mildly entertaining to be around and if you get bored with us there is a good chance that you’ll at least get to see if a live glass blowing demonstration across the hall.  Currently we have the last of our Greenhouse IPA and Hoppy Amber on tap as well as plenty of Vienna Lager, Belgian Pale Ale and coming soon a Kolsch.

This weekend we are hosting a party with our good friends and neighbors Rogue Running.  The event is on Saturday from 1-5 and all proceeds go to benefit Team Rogue Elite.  This is a great group of folks running faster than you or I could dream of and very enjoyable to be around.  After you wrap up your morning run or bike ride swing by the brewery and have a few “recovery” drinks at the dead end of east 6th St.  We like to say it’s “where 6th street ends and life begins”.  $10 entry to the event. Everyone 21 years old will receive 3 beer tickets and all proceeds go to Team Rogue Elite.

We’ve also begun hosting a great group of people striving to bring the connection between consumer and producer as close as possible.  Most importantly is to do this in a way that is profitable for the producers and honest to the consumer.  The Bountiful Sprout (www.bountifulsprout.com) online farmers market is now open in Austin!  The Bountiful Sprout started in 2007, offering produce and goods from local producers to members in Wimberley, recently expanded to Fredericksburg, and is now ready for Austin!

-Membership for farmers and consumers is $40/year.

-Farmers set their own pricing, and use free web-based software to update their inventory and market their produce during each ordering cycle.Farmers keep 92% of everything they sell.

-Members shop on-line, browsing a grocery store-style selection of locally produced goods: vegetables, shampoo, bread, honey, meats, cheeses, soap, flour, tortillas, coffee, herbs, tea, eggs, clothes, etc.

-Members pick up the boxed up grocery list from a designated pickup site on a designated day once every two weeks.There is no waste.  Its a very efficient way for farmers to sell their stuff, as they make one drop to reach a large area, don’t have to man a booth at a farmstand or farmers market, and sell their goods at almost retail prices.

-Austin pickup site is just east of downtown, inside the tasting room of the new Hops & Grain Brewery, which loves giving out free samples to anyone who stops in, including TBS members!

We are very excited about our partnership with The Bountiful Sprout and look forward to further bridging the gap between producer and consumer.  After all, who wouldn’t want to pick up their groceries at a brewery!

Don’t forget to reward your 4 legged friend with a bag of our hand-made dog treats, Brew Biscuits!  They are available all over town and every week in our tasting room.  Made with the environment and our dogs in mind.  We craft these treats from the up-cycled barley malt that we use to create all of our beer!

Join us this Thursday and every third Thursday of the month at the CTC Garden on Cesar Chavez.  We’ll be hanging out with our good friends from Cazamance Austin and pouring beer from 5-8pm.  Everyone is welcome!

And I sit, occasionally glancing up at the row of taps that have slowly but surely filled themselves in our tasting room, I am proud.  Proud like the first day I learned to ride a bike, scored my first goal in soccer and conquered my first high alpine mountain climb.  Proud, very proud.  I’ve sat in this room for many months gazing at the would-be tap wall that sits before me today.  I’ve dreamed of where we would be in a week, month, year, decade.  To be able to sit on one of our 30 custom made bar stools and hand package dog treats for a few hours is truly gratifying.  In a way that I can only describe as living the dream.  Dreams are dreams and as such they should be pursued.  I mean, “living the nightmare” doesn’t really roll off the tongue.  Living in someone else’s dream for an entire lifetime just never “tooted my horn” as they say.  Never really rose me from bed at 2 AM, anxious for a few more hours to pass so that I could head to the brewery and at least seem somewhat sane to my friends and family.

Today, I am living my dream.  I’m dirty, smell like a bakery, haven’t showered in a few days (and I use the word few very loosely) and couldn’t ask for more.  And, we’ve got 7 different beers on tap in our tasting room.  Now I don’t have any children of the human form.  My wife and I have two fantastic dogs that we spoil with the likes of the worst cases but no children.  But staring up at the tap wall and reading the styles that we’ve brewed makes me feel like I’ve got 7 children getting ready for their first day of school.  Anxious to send them off and nervous to see how they play with the other kids on the playground.  As a disclaimer; I’m not even sure if that’s what actual parents do but bear with me, I’m on a rant.   Will anyone order it? Will people make fun of it? Call it bad names? Tease it? Maybe even get in a fight with it?  Probably not the last one but you get where I’m going.

Luckily we operate in Austin, TX.  A town with an absolute devotion to small, local businesses and a desire, dare I say need, for something new! With that I can rest assured that at least one person will order these new beers that we’ve produced.  At least one.  And let’s just hope that they didn’t happen to walk into the bar chewing a gigantic piece of Big Red chewing gum.  You know, the stuff that makes your sinuses hurt with the first chews and absolutely wrecks your pallate into a state of oblivion, where the only answer is more Big Red.  Hopefully, with any luck, these new Greenhouse Styles will be well received.  Maybe even talked about on the interweb.  I guess only time will tell.

Here’s what we’ve got;

Pale Dog- American Pale Ale, 6.2%, 55 IBU

Alt-eration- German Altbier, 5.1%, 35 IBU

Greenhouse Porter- Brown Porter, 5.2%, 15 IBU

Greenhouse Night Rye-der- Rye Dark Ale, 6.6%, 75 IBU

Greenhouse Bourbon Barrel Night Rye-der, 6.6%, 75 IBU, aged in Bourbon Barrels

Greenhouse Amber, 5.5%, 70 IBU, smells like weed

Greenhouse Vienna Lager, 9.5%, 18 IBU, intense

So, across the bar I sit, gazing.

We have a full cold room right now.  Full of fresh Pale Dog and Alt-eration kegs, ready for delivery, ready for Austin.  We’ve also got a nice little stash tucked away in the corner.  Once we get a small blessing from the TABC we’ll begin sending these kegs out for delivery as well.  If you’re feeling adventurous, come on over to East 6th St. this Friday 2-6 or Saturday 12-4 and try them for yourself.  And grab a fresh bag of Brew Biscuits while your here!

Enjoy!

The other side of our business is making sure that our four-legged friends stay full of all natural, healthy dog treats called Brew Biscuits!  We make these treats from the same brewing grains that have been used to create the sweet wort that forms the backbone of all of our beers.  We’ve been baking and selling these treats for the past two years and up until recently we were scavenging around to find enough spent grain to keep up with demand.  Now we’ve got plenty of spent grain and are happily baking away and spreading the good word of sustainability through a happy, tail wagging pooch!

 This is one of the loyal and devoted members of our sales staff, Zoe!

Since we began brewing 6 weeks ago we’ve baked close to 1,200 bags of dog treats and used close to 1/38th of the spent grain that we’ve produced.  That’s keeping us pretty busy and I’m not really sure what it will look like when we’re using all of the 38ths.  Probably a veritable #%*@ load of dog treats.  Just a side note here, if you have any experience in a kitchen and are interested in a job with a bustling dog treat company that loves life and has a steady supply of craft beer on hand, shoot me an email at josh@hopsandgrain.com

Moving on.  So our beer factory is chugging along, living the dream.  Our tasting room is officially open every Friday from 2-6 and Saturday from 12-4 for free tours and samples of our beers.  We’ve also been getting involved with our local east Austin community to promote what we believe is the greatest treasure in Austin.  At the core of what we do you will find community.  We are truly passionate about the people that live and work in our neighborhood.  They have an incredible impact on us and we only hope that we can do the same.  The concept of a neighborhood brewery is almost lost in the US, at least in Texas.  While we are very limited in the way that we conduct commerce in our facility we are still committed to providing a welcoming place for the members of our community.  We have a special place in our hearts for east Austin.  We’ve lived in the neighborhood for 7 years and have committed to running our business on the east side of the tracks (read: IH 35).  Despite having copper stolen from our building and daily visits from most of Austin’s homeless population, we love where we are and what we are doing.  And we encourage all of you to make the drive east on 6th St., past the Livestrong Headquarters, past Balcones Recycling and past East Poultry to the dead end of 6th and the home of Hops & Grain Brewing.  Don’t let the cross street fool you, Calles St. is a real name, albeit redundant.

This past weekend was the final weekend of the 2011 East Austin Studio Tour.  We started it off with a party at Industry Print Shop.  We brought out a keg of our Pale Dog and the very first keg of Alt-eration.  We had a great time hanging out with our friends from Industry and are always impressed to see the work of Federico.

The following day was the first day that we officially opened the tasting room.  We had a great crowd of around 150ish people and had a blast pouring beer and talking about who we are and what we do.  Sunday night we took part in the second Hot Glass Cold Beer event with our neighbors from East Side Glass Studio.  They gave a great glass blowing demonstration and we poured plenty of liquid refreshments to enhance everyones viewing pleasure.  Yes, you read that correctly, glass blowing demonstration and beer.  Meanwhile our good friends and neighbors from SkyCandy were hosting free aerial classes.  If you haven’t seen or heard of SkyCandy you should definitely check them out, preferably before you head over to the tasting room.  So, if you’re up for hanging out with glass blowers, aerial dancers and craft beer folk then you should definitely come see us and have a few of our beers!

Lastly, we are literally days away from launching our website and adding a nice little face to our interweb presence.  Not that we don’t love to have a blog page serve as our home page but we are really stoked to have a place to browse and learn about our beers, our philosophy, our dogs and our passion.

But never fear loyal 3 readers, this blog will have it’s own special place on our website.

Thanks for all of your support and keep asking for Hops & Grain Beer!

Cheers!