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!

We are really excited to be taking part in the East Austin Studio Tour starting this weekend.  If you’ve never ventured over to east Austin during EAST maybe a keg of our Pale Dog will be enough to convince you?  In my opinion, EAST is one of the greatest things going in Austin.  It was the very first event that I attended after moving to Austin from Boulder back in 2004 and I look forward to it every year.  The event is an absolute celebration of the artistic community that resides and operates in east Austin and we are incredibly excited to be a part of that.  The event officially begins tomorrow and runs through the 20th.  We’ll have kegs of beer around at a few exhibits and will have our tasting room open as well.

The first event on tap is Hot Glass Cold Beer!  Our good friends and neighbors are the East Side Glass Studio.  If you’ve never been around a glass blowing studio or seen a demonstration then you are in for quite a treat.  Blowing glass is an incredible artform that is absolutely mesmorizing to watch.  The only thing that we could think of to make it even better is beer!  So, we’ve teamed up with the girls at East Side Glass and will be hosting Austins very first Hot Glass Cold Beer!  This Saturday from 6-9PM we will be serving beer and watching glass blowing demonstrations. Yeah, that’s right.  Should be plenty of viewing space and plenty of beer!

Here’s a link to the flyer

Last Thursday morning I’m riding my bike to the brewery, walking through the process of brewing our Greenhouse Porter for the first time.  Enjoying the nice, crisp air and the quietness of east Austin at 5:45 in the morning.  Pull up to the building where we rent space and I notice that all of the exterior lights are off.  Get inside and I notice that all the interior lights are off as well.  Construction has been ongoing on our building so I just assume that the electricians had disconnected something.  I walk down the corridor that leads to the brewery and get to our front door to find it wide open and unlocked.  Upon further inspection of our space I realize that all of our electricity is off as well.  So, I scramble around to find my flashlight and check on the large tanks of fermenting beer that maintain temperature through a large glycol chiller on the roof.  Aforementioned glycol chiller requires a large amount of electricity to operate.  So, long story short with no electricity our beer has no temperature control, no bueno.

I make a few calls and start to look around the brewery with my flashlight to check on everything.  As my light passes by our electrical breaker box I notice that the door to it was missing and the large electrical wires that connect the breaker box to the transformer at the back of the building is missing as well.  Then it all comes together.  Those electrical lines are full of copper and the three of them that are delivered to our breaker box run about 300 feet through our building before they connect to the transformer.

Ok, I’ll spare you the rest of my step by step story.  Basically, some jackasses broke into our building and stole roughly 2,000 feet of copper electrical wire leaving our entire building without electricity.  Luckily we were able to get our electricians over to the building by 7Am and we were back up and running by 4PM.  The fermenting beer in our tanks only rose about 2 degrees and was saved from catastrophe.

So, we decided to have a party.  Rather than sit around and theorize on who, what, when, where and why (actually we know a few of those) and get angry about what happened we are inviting everyone out to the brewery this Sunday for KARMA FEST!  Bring your best attitude, $10 cash to get a sweet H&G pint glass, a smile and preferably a costume!  Please note that there will be no parking in the brewery parking lot but there is plenty of parking in the neighborhood up and down east 6th st. within walking distance of the brewery.  We are located at 507 Calles St. 78702 at the dead end of east 6th.

Also, don’t forget about the Austin Beer Guide Fall Release Party tomorrow night at Draughthouse as well as the BeerTownAustin buy the beer keep the Mustache Glass night at Billy’s on Burnet this Friday, details here!

Cheers!

Our bigger 30 bbl tanks are also full of fermenting goodness.  We were really hoping that our Pale Dog Ale would be ready in time for Austin Beer Week but unfortunately it’s not looking like it will.  After all, you can’t rush these things so we will patiently wait and hope that all of you will do the same.  But, we will have some of our early experimental Greenhouse batches on tap during Austin Beer Week.  One of which is a lighter bodied version of our Pale Ale that was the very first batch to be brewed at the brewery.  We also used it as a way to propagate a large enough yeast charge to begin fermentation in our 30 bbl tanks.  That’s not to say that it isn’t tasty though!  It’s very easy drinking with a delicate and subtle hop aroma and a crisp finish.  The other one is a little experiment (not nearly as delicate or subtle as the first).  But, I can’t yet tell you what it is.  You know, secret stuff.  Availability will be limited so make sure to get there early!  Check out this link for more info, http://austinbeerweek.com/profile.php?id=00105

We are also anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first shipment of CANS!  If all goes well we should be seeing these sometime around the first or second week of November.  Fingers crossed you’ll be able to grab a six pack of our Pale Dog and Alt-eration by the end of the year!

Also, we’ve been busy baking away to fulfill orders for some of our newest Brew Biscuit accounts.  If you haven’t picked up a bag of these up-cycled dog treats for your four legged friend you can find them at many of your favorite neighborhood bars and pet retail stores.  Check here for a complete list!

We hope to see all of you out and about during Austin Beer Week

Cheers!

Last Thursday we started brewing and after 6 straight days we finally stopped for a break last night.  Our very first brew was a 3 bbl batch of our American Pale Ale, Pale Dog.  We decided to push a batch through our smaller pilot brewhouse first before launching into the bigger system.  I’ve got to say, I got a little misty eyed on my way to the brewery Thursday morning.  It’s been a rollercoaster ride of emotions over the past year working to get our brewery open and to see it all come to fruition was an incredible mix of nervousness, happiness, feeling-like-a-kid-at-Christmas-ness and plenty of good old fashioned anxiousness.  I ride my bike to the brewery just about every day but this particular ride through east Austin was a bit faster than most.  Here are a few shots of us mashing in on the Greenhouse courtesy of USABeerTrends, much more manual than our bigger brewhouse but the extra calories you burn are nice, makes the beer taste that much better!

The first batch went relatively smooth and we were pleased with the our process.  So, we decided to move to the 15 bbl brewhouse and start filling our fermenters.  I’m really excited about the flexibility that the Greenhouse 3 bbl system is going to offer us.  Many people have asked me why we decided to purchase two separate brewhouses.  After brewing on the smaller system for the first time I was even more confident in our decision.  If you need any more convincing check out our good friends from Odell Brewing Co. in Ft. Collins, CO.  We think they are making some of the best beers out there, and we like their 5 bbl pilot system as well!

First up was the Pale Dog.  Two days in a row we brewed 15 bbl’s to fill one of our fermenters.  We have just recently brought on our first employee, Adler Lentz, who moved out here from San Diego.  Adler was working with Premier Stainless Systems before coming to work with us and he actually installed and commissioned our brewhouses back in April.  So, needless to say, our first brew on the big system went really smooth.  Adler has installed around 50 breweries in the US over the past year and a half and his mastery of our system became very apparent when we fired it up.  The guy is like a wizard moving around the brewhouse and we are both incredibly excited about the beer that we are producing.  It was really cool coming into the brewery on Monday morning to hear the symphony of bubbling coming from our full fermenter of Pale Dog!

  view inside the mash tun

 nice and clear wort running off to the kettle

 first batch of Pale Dog coming to a boil

 spent grain in the mash tun, AKA lots o’ Brew Biscuits!

Next up was the Alt-eration, our German style Altbier.  I’ve been incredibly excited to brew this beer as this is one recipe that I’ve never had the opportunity to brew on a large scale.  It’s a very complex beer both in process and ingredient list.  The mashing schedule is a bit different that your standard single temperature infusion and hitting all the right temperatures is absolutely pivotal to an authentic Alt.  Again, having Adler in the brewery made it relatively painless and we hit every step spot on.  Both batches of the Alt went into the fermenter almost exactly where I wanted them to.  Still dialing in our efficiency on the new system but all things considered I feel very good about what’s happening in both of our 30 bbl fermenters.

And now we wait.  Or, rather, clean kegs, get the canning line operational, get the kegging set-up operational, finish out the tasting room, clean our lagering tanks, follow the metabolic activities of our yeast friends and bake more Brew Biscuits.  So, we should be keeping busy!

Keep following our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates on where to get your first taste of Hops & Grain Beer!

Oh, and check it out this sweet video of our first brew on the Greenhouse, thanks to USABeerTrends!

This past Thursday we were finally granted our certificate of occupancy and turned loose to begin brewing.  It’s been an incredibly emotional year for us at Hops & Grain.  A year full of anticipation, anxiety, patience, frustration, patience, frustration and did I mention patience?  Since we started construction back in November of 2010 we’ve had plenty of time to look forward to this moment.  As we speak our first round of ingredients are making their way to us from Denver, CO.  They should be arriving on Monday or Tuesday and we will be set to put our brewhouse to work on Wednesday.  We’ve been busy passivating and cleaning our tanks, dialing in the burners, tuning up the glycol chiller and walking through our processes to make sure that everything is in line.  So far so good!

On Friday evening we also started hydrating our 12 kentucky bourbon barrels.  Slowly we will begin to fill these with a myriad of styles brewed on the Greenhouse, our 3 bbl pilot system.  The first two styles that will be making their way through the 15 bbl brewhouse are the Pale Dog, our American Pale Ale, and Alt-eration, our German Altbier.  We are planning to have the Pale Dog ready for the beginning of Austin Beer Week.  We can’t tell you just yet where they’ll be available but we suggest keeping track of our Twitter and Facebook feeds for more info.

Here are few shots of the brewery, all dressed up and ready for action!

Stay tuned friends, soon you’ll see H&G flowing around town.

Cheers!

There are a few things in my life that I’m very passionate about.  The first one is my wife Meg, or @hopsandgrainmeg for those of you in the twitterverse.  You can also catch some of her literary ponderings here.

My other passions are craft beer, dogs and running.  I also love to commute about town on my bicycle or Vespa but I’ll save that for another time.

I’ve been running most of my life.  In my early years and throughout college it was mostly focused on the soccer field.  I ran for fitness during the offseason and quite a bit for punishment during high school.  Most of my running was done to improve my soccer game.  I ran track throughout school and even tried my hand at pole vaulting in high school.  Didn’t really fare too well but I had a blast doing it.  As I neared the end of my college career and I call it a career because I spent the better part of 6 years there, I began to run to clear my head.  When I ran to improve my fitness I never really found a mind clearing peacefulness.  Maybe because I was just thinking about how much longer I had to run instead of focusing on what I was doing.  It was just for fitness and I was doing it so that I could improve in other sports.  Not sure what sparked that first ethereal running experience in college but what I do know is that something clicked inside me during that run.  I lost total track of time, and everything else around me for that matter.  I was completely focused on nothing, and it was beautiful.  For the next few months I operated on this sort of “run until you are ready to stop” mentality.  A few times this left me way too far from home and I’d end up walking back but I still got up the next day and did it all over again.  The University that I attended is well known for its distance running program.  They have an incredible recruiting program and have consistently won both indoor and outdoor Division II national championships for as many years as I can remember.  We had a large contingent of kenyan runners that attended the school and I found myself absolutely fascinated with the speed and seemingly effortless motion that they maintained while they ran.  So, as I normally do when I get really interested in something, I found and read as many books as I could on distance running.  It was absolutely fascinating to me.  I wasn’t incredibly concerned with how fast I ran but I had found this love affair with the way that I felt while I was running.  So, naturally, I wanted to experience this feeling for as long as possible and in order for me to run longer I felt like I needed to learn a thing or two about biomechanics.  So I did.  Most of my roommates thought I was crazy when I would come home and answer their question of “how far did you run?” with “I don’t know”.  They were even more amazed when I would then head to the fridge for a beer.

Running became a part of my everyday life at the age of 22.  I ran my first marathon when I was 23 and finished my first ironman when I was 24.  I spent a good portion of my early twenties trying to race triathlon for a living and I had a fantastic time doing it.  I lived in Boulder amongst some of the greatest distance athletes in the country and I had to the opportunity to work and train with a few of them.  But, as my competitiveness started to increase I found that I didn’t have that same feeling that turned me on to running in the first place.  All of the sudden, in a matter of 2 years I had come full circle.  I would go out for runs with a heart rate monitor around my chest and a speed sensor on my foot.  Most of my runs consisted of staring at a watch, all with the intention of hitting certain splits or maintaining a certain heart rate.  I had found my soul through running at the age of 22 and in two short years and had completely lost it.

I kept training but I started spending more time running in the mountains, for a long time.  I would go on these 7-8 hour voyages in the mountains, running for an hour or so, hiking for an hour or so, running again, and so on.  It was magical and I was starting to get back to that feeling that I had lost.  Trail running started taking precedence over the rest of my training.  It was much easier to talk myself into getting out the door at 5am to go for a run than it was to head out the door for a swim workout.  And, I could take my dog Suzy with me when I ran.  Unfortunately, after only 2 years of chasing my dream at being a full time triathlete I was starting to slip away from it.  But, I had found my soul again through running.

Eventually I moved back to Austin and spent the first five of my years back in TX working with Rogue Running, both as a running coach and the general manager of their retail arm, Rogue Equipment. It was awesome!  My life consisted of helping people to achieve their goals, and find their soul, through running.  When I left Rogue to open Hops & Grain I made a commitment to myself that I would carry my passion for running into the brewery.  We are getting very close and I can promise you that Hops & Grain will be an active part of the running community in Austin.  I practically crafted all of my ideas for the brewery through running.  Solved mechanical layout issues during my morning runs.  Came up with ideas for events and marketing through running.  Hell, I think I’ve solved most of the worlds problems during a run!

This past weekend I went down to the greenbelt and ran for about 2 hours.  Most of my runs are now consumed with me thinking about Hops & Grain and how to make it successful but this past weekend was different.  I didn’t think about anything, and it was amazing.  I just ran, through the woods, dry creek beds, over a few snakes, up the Hill of Life, twice, and all the way back to my car.  The entire 2 hours I felt like I was just hovering over the ground.  I didn’t want to stop, and had it not been for my squishy shoes due to the crazy amount of sweat that I produce this time of year I probably would have kept going.  It was one of those runs that reminds me why I run.  At the end, I felt at peace and I felt relaxed.  Most of all, I felt in touch with my soul.

Good start to a Saturday!