Dallas & Austin

I mean I love Live Oak but come on man, putting aside personal style preferences JK is clearly the best brewery in Austin. Calling them just a sour brewery is pretty lame. They're one of the best in the world at everything they try, whether it's wild ales, lambics, or saisons. Like, their first stout they ever made is still one of the best stouts ever brewed in the state of TX. Calling JK limited in scope is a valid point, but Live Oak is even more limited in scope lol, they exclusively make old Bavarian style beers. Live Oak Hefeweizen is my all time favorite beer so I'm definitely biased in their favor but the breadth and depth of what the breweries have accomplished is not comparable. According to their brewery pages on this site, Live Oak has only made around 30 beers ever, only 5 of which have a rating of 4 or above. Whereas JK has made over 150 beers, 95 of which have a rating of 4 or above

 

So... You say that JK makes great sour beer, great funky sour beer, great spicy/herbal sour beer, and great roasty sour beer?

All of the beer styles you mentioned they make sour or funky with their assortment of wild yeasts.

Plus do you actually know what a Lambic is? It's just a wild ale from the region around Brussels in Belgium.

I drank a ton of Black Metal, Commercial Suicide, and Wytchmaker when they first opened their doors. When they switched them all to just be variants of their sour beer then they stopped being on tap up here. I still drank most of the available bottles.

Saying all Live Oak makes is old Bavarian style beers is disingenuous. They are most known for their Hefeweizen (Bavarian) and their Pilz (Czech) but their other year-round beer is Grodziskie which is a smoked Polish style wheat lager. They also make a great Schwarzbier, Berliner Weisse, Rauchbier, Helles, Weizenbock, a second very different Pilsner, Oktoberfest, and Doppelbock.

By and large Jester King's vast experimentation revolves around making a sour beer with whatever fruit or herbs strike their fancy and trying out different barrels. They also make a few stouts and hoppy beers. But it's still all adaptations on a theme.

I couldn't care less about how many different beers a brewery makes. I just care about how good they are.

User ratings are utter bullshit and useless for comparing between styles. They tell more about the people doing the reviewing than they tell about the beer itself.

BA has almost 3600 American Wild Ales with a 4.0 or better.
There are only about 400 German Pilsners with a 4.0 or better.

JK gets such high rankings because people are idiots. They automatically add close to a point to everything if it's a sour. Anything that isn't sour, hoppy, or high alcohol isn't worse but it's not granted the bonus points.

JK's beers are most definitely good but they do get the benefit of hype just based on the style they chose to focus on.

But even if JK did produce the absolute best Sour beers in the world... That still wouldn't make them the best brewery. There is no single "best brewery" unless they can produce the best sour beers, and clean beers of different types (hoppy, dark, big, light).

It's useless recommending someone that hates sour beers to go to Jester King because they just won't enjoy the beer. Likewise I wouldn't recommend some who loves IPA's or big stouts to go to Live Oak because they just wouldn't be happy either.

JK is the best brewery for sour/wild beer in Texas.
ABGB makes the best brewery for clean pilsners but Live Oak is the best brewery for wide range of classic Continental European styles.
PHP or Southern Heights or someone else is the best brewery for IPA's.

 

Want to add in my support of Oddwood. Great for kids due to the free games and the food is great...as is the beer! PHP is great for IPA's but can get very crowded...a lot of the time. If you have time, JK is worth the trip for the experience and great beer. Plus, Last Stand is just minutes up the road and does some really nice beers. All are kid friendly to a degree.

 

I guess we just fundamentally disagree on that point. Is Cantillon not the best brewery in Brussels?

 

I've no clue what the best brewery in Brussels is. I've never even seen a Cantillon bottle and I've never been to Brussels (Just Brugge and Bastogne).

But I have heard a few people say that Cantillon is crap and 3 Fonteinen is better.

But even then that would be a better question because many of the breweries there make the same style of beer as Cantillon. You can directly compare their beers to the beers of 3 Fonteinen, Lindemans, Timmerman, and other breweries from that area. They all make lambic sours.

But Jester King doesn't have much competition in their choice in theme in Austin. Oddwood and Blue Owl make sours.

So is JK a better brewery than Live Oak or PHP?

I have no idea because how do we really objectively compare Wild Ales with Continental lagers, or American IPAs?

Certain styles are more hyped than others. People on rating websites rate certain flavor profiles more highly than others. Are the ratings from the brewery making better beer or just beer that "beer nerds" obsess over?

Going through the BA ratings.
The classic European styles have a consistent 10% of beers given 4.0 or higher.
Pilsner, Hefeweizen, ESB, Oktoberfest. All have right around 10% of the examples at 4.0 or higher.
American IPAs are higher with 20% of examples getting 4.0+
New England IPAs, 60% are rated 4+
Imperial Stouts are 50-60% 4+
And American Wild Ales are 50% 4+

So is a brewery like JK actually a much better brewery than another one in evidence because they get a lot of 4+ ratings... Or is it just that people on the rating site are much more likely to artificially boost the ratings of the beers due to the style of beer chosen?

 

Thanks for the all the help and advice - the trip is this weekend so I'll report back. Also should I be worried about the flooding going on? AirBnB is offering me a refund in case I feel like cancelling due to floods....I reached out to my host but haven't heard back yet.

 

Nah, everything is good now.

 

I personally don't worry about flooding around here. The weekend the boil water notice went out in Austin my wife and I drove through Austin to Fredericksburg. Didn't see any standing water. There is flooding some places but by and large it's not a problem.

That said I hope you enjoy your time in Austin and I look forward to hearing what you choose to do and what you think about it.

Prost!

 

Everyone's advice was very helpful - we had a great trip despite the cold and rainy weather. The cold actually made it easier to walk around more but didn't allow us to enjoy the outdoor areas of the breweries like I would have preferred.

Anyway - I won't go through a play-by-play of the entire trip, but we landed late Thursday and had a great dinner at Loro, I had a couple light beers from Celis and Pinthouse Pizza that were excellent. Thursday we hit up Live Oak, Oddwood Ales and Southern Heights. Definitely need to return to Live Oak for the disc golf some day. All of them were great though - thanks for the recommendation on SH, as it wasn't even on my radar but ended up being a highlight. All of them were not busy, easy for the family to chill, and I was impressed with all of the beers - particularly Oddwood Ales which I'd definitely return to. My 4 year old daughter loved it and had to play every single video game they had.... Maybe I was just in a good mood but all of the beers at these places impressed me and I'd highly recommend all of them, the service was great as well. Finally, picked up dinner at Banger's where I had the Electric Jellyfish IPA from Pinthouse which really hit the spot.

Saturday we focused on the East Austin breweries - the advice above was spot on, these are definitely had a younger, rowdier vibe than the others, nothing the family couldn't handle though. Started with breakfast at Lazarus - love that they open so early and serve breakfast and beer, made it easy to get a good start on the day. I though the beers were solid too. Walked over to Hops & Grain which had a loud a somewhat obnoxious group of people outside - they soon left, but I didn't find the beers all that memorable. Headed over to Blue Owl - the beers were fine, still can't stand sour stouts though, as much as I wish I could. The La Barbeque line was ridiculous so we just kept walking and had some great brisket and pork shoulder at Kerlin BBQ. Picked up pizza that night to-go at ABGB and had one of their light beers which was fine.

Sunday we had a nice visit to the Hamilton Pool and the ended up at Jester King - not the most stroller friendly place in the world so we set up in the barn area and had an amazing short rib and burrata and a pretty good pizza. I'm not the biggest sour fan but these ones all really hit the spot for me - great balance of sour and funk that I really enjoyed, reminded me of some Sante Adairius beers that I love like Cask 200. I'm used the the enamel-stripping sours of the Bruery over here, so JK sours were a pleasant change. Highlights for me were Biere de Miel and Biere de Coupage and SPON 3 2017. The rain and the stroller made it difficult to explore as much as I would have liked but we had a great time anyway. I found the merch tent severely lacking - surely they have a store or something right? Was planning to grab a shirt or hoodie but nothing in the tent caught my interest. Ah well. It was a great visit and I'd love to return some day.

Overall it was a great trip, and the breweries all exceeded my expectations - would love to return to Austin some day and return to some of these breweries and also to have the patience to wait for some of these other BBQ spots I couldn't try on this trip. Thanks again for all the advice - much appreciated!

 

I'm glad that you enjoyed the trip.