Austin Area Beer Recommendations (2023)

Any brewery events of note going on this weekend? Coming out to visit my brother’s family for a long weekend and it seems like the temp might be cooling down a bit to where we can hang outside for a couple hours

 

They used to have a few at the Flying Saucer but I'm not aware of any other places in the past several years.

 

The Draught House usually has three on and if their website is updated, they currently have a cream ale, a sour red, and a blonde ale on cask. Their beers are so-so IMO but I have enjoyed their Dream State cream ale on both cask and nitro.

 

I appreciate the information. I'll head over there maybe this weekend.

 

For what it's worth, Meanwhile has a really nice spot, tons of outside seating and a lot of it is shaded with trees, beer isn't too shabby either. Hold out brewing also pretty good and closer to downtown. Austin Beer Garden is always great if you love lagers. And any of the Pinthouse locations will do you right, especially if you tag on a pizza. Have fun and stay cool. In HTown and today was the first day in I can't remember where we didn't hit 100. I think we maxed out at 87.

 

another vote for Meanwhile. What Austin lacks in whale beers, it makes up in nice brewery layouts

 

I went to Lazarus brewing on Airport. Nice selection of beers, upscale feel, spacious beer garden with a nice stage for bands. There was no band because it was Sunday afternoon, but still it's nice to see a reasonably-sized stage.

Standouts were the 40 days and 40 nights IPA and the Old Wellington English pub-style nitro.

 

Was in Austin Sunday - Wednesday this past weekend for two Pearl Jam shows. A quick summary for those interested.

Sunday - landed around 1 and went right to Meanwhile. Beer variety was good and Distant Relatives was amazing. The brisket was fantastic. They were out of sides by the time we got there but had great fries from one of the other trucks. Went to Pinthouse on Burnet for dinner to catch the SNF game. Beer was again good. Pizza was fine (says guy who lives halfway between New Haven and NYC so high standards). Definitely was a good spot to watch a game and have good beer.

Monday - Started with 36 holes at Peter Pan minigolf (BYOB) and then went to Terry Black's for lunch. Again, great brisket. We made our way to Batch only to find out that they were closing in 45 minutes (random 2:45 employee meeting) so had one beer each there. Beers were good. Decided to walk towards downtown and ended up at Haymakers, bar where beer options were fine (lots of local stuff) and darts/shuffleboard entertained us.

Tuesday - Went to Live Oak at open and played 18 holes of disc golf. Beers were all refreshing on a 95 degree day (highest ABV was 6%). The disc golf was an experience (none of us are disc golfers) in the backyard of the brewery. I would recommend it for people with time to do something. No food there on a Tuesday so we made our way to Meanwhile (2 of the guys got in after we had been there Sunday) which isn't far and enjoyed the tacos from the truck there. Went to dinner at the orignal Black's BBQ and that was just ok compared to the other two above.

As locals will know, many (most) BBQ places are closed Mondays (and several not open Tuesday either) so that dictated our going to Distant Relatives on Sunday and Terry Black's on Monday. It definitely limited your BBQ options on a Sunday - Wednesday trip.

We stayed at a hotel on UT campus and found it well located for our travels. We did about an equal amount of walking and Uber/Lyft over the three days.

Moody Center is a really nice venue. It's NYC expensive for drinks (way out of line with prices at other places in Austin) with a good (but limited) selection of beer.

Concerts were awesome.

 

I may be showing my age here, but does anybody remember the Waterloo Brewing Company?
They had to close down in 2000 because the state bought the property and was going to build a new office building for the Lege (which never got built). That also killed a nice little homebrew supply outfit on the other side of the parking lot.
I am concerned that the Draft House is trying the cocktails route. Waterloo tried that, as did the Copper Tank. It didn't turn out to be worth the effort in either case.

 

Yes. I went once late 90s. Went back a few years later and it was gone. The homebrew shop was notorious in the homebrew community.

Other places that I remember are the Gingerman, Bitter End, and Copper Tank (IIRC).