News about Beers, Brewers and Brewing in the Lone Star State
This month, the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner celebrates its centennial year in operation. A recent news release detailing a short history of the brewery, picked up by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as "Spoetzl Brewery, once close to last call, marks its 100th birthday", is making the AP rounds in news sources to date as far as Houston, Denver, and Toledo, Ohio.
Austin's newest brewery, (512) Brewing, has just installed an additional 80-barrel fermentor at their facility, greatly expanding their existing capacity. This is the first major expansion at this brewery, occurring prior to their first anniversary.
Rahr & Sons was featured in a pair of stories this week in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, both entitled "Rahr & Sons microbrewery boosting production in Fort Worth." The stories detail the installation of two new fermentors and the struggle the brewery has had keeping up with demand for product.
A new Texas location of the Flying Saucer chain is planned for the Dallas suburb of Garland, adjacent to Lake Ray Hubbard. This location is scheduled to open in late July.
Fort Worth's Rahr & Sons has just purchased two new 120-bbl fermentation tanks from the Old Dominion Brewing Company of Ashburn, Virginia.
Both Fort Worth brewers The Covey Restaurant & Brewery and Rahr & Sons won medals at the 2009 Los Angeles International Commercial Beer Competition held last month in Los Angeles, California.
Tuesday, June 9th, marked the fifteenth anniversary for Houston's Saint Arnold Brewing Company. As the oldest Texas microbrewery from the robust number of operations that began throughout the 1990s, Saint Arnold marked the occasion on the Saturday prior with a large anniversary party at the present brewery, as well as several smaller events planned for this week.
The planned Circle Brewing of Austin launched an updated version of their website on Friday. The brewery is still in the fundraising and planning stages, with only a few shares left before they can break ground on construction of their facility.
The second annual Studs & Suds Microbrew Festival was held on Monday at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie. The event was again sponsored by craft beer distributor Ben E. Keith, along with a few beers by Andrews Distributing.
Again, no local brewers were invited, and no beers were offered that are not easily found at local commercial retailers. Attendance was variable as people wandered between the festival and the nearby races but the crowd seemed about the same size as last year.
Rahr & Sons won the Clear Channel Outdoor Excellence in Business Award in April at the 2009 Fort Worth Entrepreneur Expo. The award recognizes the success of a local small business, with Rahr & Sons' revenues growing 31% in 2008 and currently 71% over the same Q1 of last year.
Southern Star's next beer will be a saison, the winner of their first annual homebrewing competition. Of the 43 beers entered, the winning brewers Mark Kizer and Scott Wells of Austin will have their recipe produced and sold by Southern Star, as well as entered on their behalf at the Pro-Am competition of the Great American Beer Festival next year..jpg)
Even with it's recent success reaching the Calendars Committee, the latest version of the direct sales for breweries bill, HB 2904, failed to appear on the schedule published last week for the current legislative session. This ends the progress for the proposed bill and any attempts to change brewery sales restrictions this session.