B. United portfolio coming to Texas through Favorite Brands

De Dolle doesn't produce enough beer for the Texas market. As I understand it, there aren't plans to bring any of their stuff to Texas in the foreseeable future. Sorry.

But I'm still incredibly excited for the rest of the portfolio. This has been in the works for so long, I'm glad it's finally happening soon.

 

I'm surprised no one mentioned Proffesor Fritz yet. Deliciousness. Although I did have a weird taste variance in bottles once that was disappointing.

 

It will be a focused roll out to begin but expect Hitachino, Harviestoun, Aecht Schlenkerla in the coming weeks (think late March early April). I love the De Dolle, Hanssens, JW Lees so if there is success with the brands that roll first there will be more to follow. Cheers

 

1809 is just outstanding. I would buy cases of it every year.

Given the Jester King blog post pointing out the lack of a single true lambic on the Texas market I hope that Hanssens jumps that list quite a bit. There is a glaring void in our market...please please help us out!

 

I'd like to get my hands on a bottle of the Grodziskie.

I was wondering about that too. Cuvee Rene is a pretty decent gueuze, which makes it a lambic beer, and although their fruit lambics are sweetened they're still made with Lindemans base lambic beer. And lambic beers have EU protected status (PDF), so if it says lambic on the label it should be.

 

I'll buy the hell out of Schlenkerla as well. The first beer to pop my rauch cherry. I never thought I'd see the day when I could get any of these beers, including Founders and many others, in TX.

 

Because it's easy to get and therefore crap?

 

Nice to see. The tide sure is changing in TX.

 

It's reaching a beer tsunami.

 

I thought Jester Kings post was also crap. There are spontaneously fermented beers in nearly every bottle shop in Texas. Of course the best in the style are missing here in Texas. Dont know why they felt the need to bring that up.

 

I think it's a case of semantics really...but also perhaps tradition as well. I think what JK was suggesting was there are no traditionally brewed lambics, leading me to believe that at some point Lindermans and Timmermans uses non traditional processes to create their beer (my hypothesis because I have no idea really). Excluding those two examples what else would be close to a traditional Geuze?

Disregarding that, the list of brewers that could be supported via this move is exciting. And potential access to them means that a lot of retail stores need to invest in more beer cooler space. I've noticed that the Central Market in Fort Worth has added an additional 300-400 sq feet of beer at the cost of wine.

 

From what i have read and hear lindermans and timmermans adds sugar to make them more sweet. Traditional lambics are more tart than sweet.

 

Lindemans and Timmermans both dose their beer with souring yeasts and bacteria, rather than using natural methods of inoculation. That's one of several tradition-inconsistent practices employed by these two that make them "pseudo-lambics". It also allows for wide-spread availability. Cuvee Rene is still a great beer that's available in a ton of shops. It just lacks authenticity.

 

Traditional or not, I enjoy the fuck out of Cuvee Renee and Timmermans Oude Gueuze. I'm really stoked about getting Hanssens though. And Aecht Schlenkerla. And Fritz Briem. I've had some pretty good beers from Del Borgo and Baladin as well. Our import selection is about to get 1000x better.

 

Kind of surprised that Live Oak hasn't done one. I think they'd kill it.

 

Had Southern Star's Rauchbier at the JK 2nd Anny. I thought it was ok. Maybe I just don't dig a pale malt/smoke combo.

 

Their Smoketoberfest is probably the closest they've done, and I really enjoyed it. They smoked the malt themselves using Ranger Creek's smoker.

 

Karbach's Pontificator smoked doppelbock was excellent.

 

They did smoktoberfest