Presented By
2 019 // SA N A N T ON IO BE E R W E E K
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
8
12
FOREWORD
A NOTE from the SABW BOARD
SEVEN STEPS to a BETTER BEER WEEK
18
24
COLLABORATION BREW DAY
DIRECTORY of BREWERIES
Harrison Civick Founder/Creative Director
CONTRIBUTORS Lance Higdon
JoMando Cruz
Editor in Chief/Photographer
Jeremy Banas
Alexandria Rutledge Designer
Les Locke
Julian Ruiz Web Developer
CON TAC T US sabeermag
sabeerweek
sabeermag
sabeerweek
sabeermag
sabeerweek
info@sabeermag.com
support@sabeerweek.org
sabeermag.com
sabeerweek.org
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2 019 // SA N A N T ON IO BE E R W E E K
FOREWORD by: Jeremy Banas
Why take a week to celebrate beer in San Antonio? The reasons have everything to do with family and a sense of belonging. These feelings permeate throughout our city and tie us together as a community, defining what it means to be “puro San Antonio.” Anything other cities can do, we can do better. It’s this same sense of community and puro attitude, along with a love of good beer, that gave birth to San Antonio Beer Week (SABW) nine years ago. In 2010, two of SABW’s co-founders attended an event during Houston’s first-ever beer week. As they enjoyed the festivities, they looked around and wondered why San Antonio couldn't host a beer week of its own. After all, before Prohibition San Antonio had the highest concentration of breweries in the state, and it’s the only city in Texas to have a continuously operating brewery since the 1850s. Our first beer week debuted the following year when the San Antonio area had only five breweries (Blue Star, Freetail, Ranger Creek, Faust in New Braunfels, and The Dodging Duck in Boerne). Those first few years saw many challenges (including finding enough events to fill an entire week). In those years, we scheduled SABW in May to coincide with American Craft Beer Week, taking advantage of participation from other state and national breweries. This helped fill the gaps in our calendar, making our celebration more robust. But we’ve come a long way since those days. Each year our San Antonio beer family has grown exponentially, and each year has seen San Antonio area breweries come together like a family and collaborate on one beer. A celebration of San Antonio in liquid form. This year, area brewers came together to brew a dry-hopped pilsner for beer week, a beer that speaks to San Antonio’s brewing past—with a hint of the modern—and one that will bring us all together over a pint or several. So join us June 15 through June 22 for a celebration of San Antonio area beer, family and our puro San Antonio community.
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A NO T E f rom the SA BW B OA R D
A NOTE from the SABW BOARD by: Les Locke
Nearly 10 years ago, we set out to showcase what independent craft brewers with bold ideas had to offer with our inaugural San Antonio Beer Week. Five breweries anchored those first events in 2010. In less than a decade, we have reached 25 breweries in Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe, and Kendall counties. And while many expect our industry to deflate like a Mylar balloon, in San Antonio, we are ever growing and gaining market share. We should take a moment and applaud ourselves—the brewers, the beer drinkers, and the supporters of our craft. We have built a bridge, and though we may be traveling in different directions, we are on the same trajectory with the same mission: making hand-crafted beer with the intention of providing the freshest, most unique beer possible. This mission of excellence and sometimes fighting those that would stifle it is far from complete. And we can’t let petty differences within our community divide and separate what we have long fought for. This isn’t about anything other than who is making the beer, what is used to make it, and how much love has gone into our shared movement. We’ve reimagined classic and forgotten foreign styles, popularized them, and created an explosion of very unique beers that have driven our culture of discovery. Our flexibility as small, independent brewers has allowed us to have an increasingly greater economic impact on our community.This driving force, though at times dictated by us as brewers, is also guided by what the beer drinkers clamor for. This is the real reason we do what we do. And we must continue. Events like San Antonio Beer Week are evidence of how far craft beer has permeated our society and our city. I implore our brewers to continue building on the success we have achieved. We must push our craft to its limits and raise our quality across the board. We are all setting out to create new beer experiences, introducing craft beer in fine dining occasions, and showcasing what we do in nonconformist and unconventional ways. And as long as we remember that beer still belongs to us—its makers and consumers—then we will always be united by it even as our community changes and grows. Cheers and much love.
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SEVEN STEPS to a BETTER BEER WEEK by: Lance Higdon
Whether this is your first San Antonio Beer Week or your ninth (!), these seven days offer us the opportunity not just to drink great beer, but to drink great beer better. We’ve compiled a simple list to help you taste more carefully, classify more easily, and enjoy more thoroughly every brew that comes your way this year. Drink deep!
C OM I NG to YOU R SE N SE S To become the Tim Duncan of the pints, we must master the fundamentals. Follow these drills with a few pints and you’re bound to take it to the glass—literally: ӹӹ Look At It: What’s the beer’s color? Is it clear, hazy, opaque? Is there a lot of head, or a little? ӹӹ Smell It: What’s the beer’s aroma? Is it mild or bold? Subtle or sharp? Does it remind you of other foods, or even non-foods? ӹӹ Taste It: What’s the beer’s flavor trajectory? Is it sweet, salty, sour, or bitter? Does it start as one and finish as another? Does the taste match the aroma? ӹӹ (Mouth) Feel It: Does the beer drink fast or slow? Does it linger on the tongue or finish clean? Could you shotgun this beer? Should you?
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S E V E N S T E P S to a BE T T E R BE E R W E E K
BE E R , DE C ON S T RUC T E D Now that we’ve broken down how to drink a beer, it’s time to break down beer itself. Beer requires four ingredients: water, malt, hops, and yeast. We assume you’ve tasted water before (and advise against shotgunning vials of pure yeast); malt kernels and hop pellets, probably not. To get really up close and personal with these two elements, take a trip to your local homebrew supply store and buy small samples of a few malted grains and a few varieties of hop. Make a porridge with the malt and brew the hops in a tea, then taste them. Isolate each variable in that beer you love, and you’ll make the contours of your favorite flavors pop.
A DJUST to A DJU NCTS Craft beer draws on a dizzying spectrum of flavors, as diverse as the notes demanded from top sommeliers. This can be a challenge if you aren’t an adventurous eater, but the deconstructionist approach we took with basic beer ingredients reaps rewards with adjuncts too. We’ll start with fruit. Go to your favorite produce provider and buy an orange, a lime, and a grapefruit. Then, eat (or at least taste) as much of each as you can. Grate some zest off the lime peels; chew on the orange and grapefruit pith. Take deep inhales of each one’s aroma, too—the nose tastes as much as the tongue.
R E A D the GR E AT S Even if you rarely read anything besides beer labels, you’ll learn a lot by cracking a few volumes of beer history. For the broadest view, begin with Michael Jackson, a British beer writer and the best English-language author on the subject. Seek out a copy of Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, in which Jackson becomes the Rick Steves of the tap list, rendering in-depth histories (and flavor profiles) of the world’s great styles. San Antonio beer has its own chronicler in Travis E. Poling, who in 2015 published San Antonio Beer: Alamo City History By The Pint. It’s an excellent survey of the heritage we celebrate during Beer Week, and one for which we are always writing the epilogue.
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M A S T E R the E L E M E N T S of S T Y L E By now we’ve got a good handle on the elements of beer style: light or dark, dry or dank, breezy or boozy. Now it’s time to peg these flavor profiles to particular styles. Begin by getting a handle on the classics (a good reason to reach for your Jackson book, perhaps). Stouts are dark-hued and full-bodied; pilsners drink lean and clean; IPAs lead with their hops. Once you’ve got a baseline understanding of the craft continuum, take a deeper dive into each style and how intrepid brewmasters mix and match style elements to produce something new. Hoppy lagers? Sour porters? They’re all fair game for your field book.
T E L L A L L YOU R F R I E N D S Some people turn to social media solely for clout. We, however, were meant for greater things—like beer nerd alliances to ensure mutual gains in the craft game. While every major platform hosts at least one craftie-run group, we’re particularly partial to Untappd, the most widespread app for tracking beer growth. Create an account, and you can log your pints with pictures, tasting notes, and a handy five-point rating scale. Even better, all your friends can join, enabling you to toast their check-ins and compile wish lists for future consumption.
TA K E a SU D S SA BBAT H The paradox of palate perfection is that it has no limit. There will always be more to taste and more to learn, so even beer gods would do well to take a rest. Sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is sign out of our apps, tuck away the tasting journal, and kick back with our beer-lovin’ beloveds. Toast your life’s blessings, drink deep, and relax. You’ve earned it.
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SA BW C OL L A B OR AT ION BR E W DAY
SABW COLLABORATION BREW DAY Words and photos: JoMando Cruz
While San Antonio Beer Week is filled with plenty of events and revelry, one of my favorite components of the week is the SABW collaboration brew day. Every year, local brewers come together at a rotating host brewery to brew an official beer for San Antonio Beer Week. Taking place before the actual week (so that the beer can actually ferment and become, well, beer), SA brewers gathered at Alamo Beer Co. in late April to brew a dry-hopped pilsner. While the temptation to brew something massive or experimental or adjunct-heavy or barrel-aged always exists, the Texas heat and June beer week dates loom larger. SABW is a marathon, not a sprint. While we are no strangers to brew days, breweries, and brewing, the collaboration brew day is unique. So many of San Antonio’s breweries are represented, making the beer they produce a truly collective effort and inarguably the most tangible symbol of what San Antonio Beer Week represents. While not everybody in our scene can spare a brewer or two for the collaboration brew day (we’ve all got businesses to run), we had a great showing at this year’s. As always, it was a pleasure to represent and document this brew day for SA Beer Magazine. More than the beer itself, the camaraderie captured by our cameras sets this brew day and our beer week apart. JoMando Cruz, Editor in Chief/Photographer SA Beer Magazine
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D I R E C T O R Y of B R E W E R I E S
DIRECTORY OF BREWERIES San Antonio and its surrounding area is a prime location for exploring a wide-ranging selection of craft breweries and brewpubs—and that isn’t even counting Austin’s offerings. In our experience, most people don’t take as wide a view of the region as they should. With that in mind, we’ve gathered the pertinent information you require and created a directory of San Antonio’s vibrant and growing brewery and brewpub scene. To be clear, this directory highlights places that brew beer, from production facilities with taprooms to brewpubs with food programs. And we’re making sure to include both San Antonio proper and our friendly neighbors in Adkins, Bandera, Blanco, Boerne, Driftwood, Fredericksburg, New Braunfels, San Marcos, and Seguin. This directory will evolve along with the city’s beer scene. You can always consult SA Beer Magazine for an updated and comprehensive list of the local craft beer scene because we’ll be sure to print it in every issue. All you need to do is decide which venue to visit next. Cheers! »
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A DK I NS CACTUS LAND BREWING CO. 368 County Road 325, Adkins, TX 78101 1st & 3rd weekend / month | Fri: 3pm–9pm | Sat: 12pm-9pm cactuslandbrewing.com
BL A NCO REAL ALE BREWING COMPANY 231 San Saba Ct., Blanco, TX 78606 Mon–Tue: Closed | Wed-Thu: 12pm–6pm | Fri: 11am–7pm | Sat: 11am–7pm | Sun: 12pm–5pm realalebrewing.com
BOER N E BOERNE BREWERY
THE DODGING DUCK BREWHAUS
9 Hill View Ln., Boerne, TX 78006
402 River Rd., Boerne, TX 78006
Fri: 2pm-5pm | Sat: 1pm-4pm
Mon–Thu: 11am–9pm | Fri–Sat: 11am–10pm Sun: 11am–9pm
boernebrewery.com
dodgingduck.com
CIBOLO CREEK BREWING CO. 448 S. Main St., Boerne, TX 78006
KINEMATIC BREWING CO.
Mon: 11am–9pm | Tue: Closed Wed–Thu: 11am–9pm | Fri–Sat: 11am–10pm Sun: 11am–8pm
Temporarily closed while moving to a new location kinematicbrewingco.com
cibolocreekbrewing.com
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N EW BR AU N FE L S 5 STONES ARTISAN BREWERY
GUADALUPE BREWING CO.
11335 FM 1863, New Braunfels, TX 78132
1586 Wald Rd., New Braunfels, TX 78132
Wed-Thu: 12pm - 6pm | Fri-Sat: 12pm - 9pm
Mon: 4pm–9pm | Thu: 4pm–9pm
5stonesbrewery.com
Fri–Sat: 12pm–10pm | Sun: 12pm–9pm guadalupebrew.com
FAUST BREWING CO. 499 S. Castell Ave., New Braunfels, TX 78130
NEW BRAUNFELS BREWING CO.
Thu: 4pm–10pm | Fri: 3pm–11pm Sat: 12pm–11pm | Sun: 1pm–8pm
180 W. Mill St., Ste. 100, New Braunfels, TX 78130 Thu: 4pm–8pm | Fri: 2pm–8pm Sat: 11am–9pm | Sun: 1pm–7pm
faustbrewing.com
nbbrewing.com
RUGGEDMAN BREWING CO. 7600 S. Old Bastrop Rd., New Braunfels, TX 78130 Fri: 4pm–9pm | Sat: 1pm–9pm Sun: 2pm–6pm drinkthedamnbeer.com
SA N A N TON IO ALAMO BEER COMPANY
FREETAIL BREWING CO.
202 Lamar St., San Antonio, TX 78202
Production Facility & Taproom 2000 S. Presa St., San Antonio, TX 78210
Mon–Thu: 3pm–9pm | Fri: 3pm–12am Sat: 12pm–12am | Sun: 12pm–9pm alamobeer.com
Wed–Thu: 4pm–9pm | Fri: 4pm–10pm Sat: 12pm–10pm | Sun: 12pm–6pm
BLUE STAR BREWING CO.
FREETAIL BREWING CO.
1414 S. Alamo St., San Antonio, TX 78210
Brewpub 4035 N. Loop 1604 W., San Antonio, TX 78257
Mon: 11am–9pm | Tue- Thu: 11am–11pm Fri: 11am–1:45am | Sat: 10am–1:45am Sun: 11am–9pm bluestarbrewing.com
BUSTED SANDAL BREWING CO. 7114 Oaklawn Dr., San Antonio, TX 78229 Mon–Fri: 4:30pm–10pm | Sat: 12pm–10pm Sun: 12pm–6pm bustedsandalbrewing.com
Mon–Sat: 11am–12pm | Sun: 12pm–12am freetailbrewing.com
GHOST PIXEL BEER STUDIO 2000 S. Presa St., San Antonio, TX 78210 Thu-Fri: 4pm–9pm | Sat: 12pm–10pm Sun: 12pm–6pm ghostpixelbeer.com
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DORĆOL DISTILLING + BREWING CO.
RANGER CREEK BREWING & DISTILLING CO.
1902 S. Flores St., San Antonio, TX 78204
4834 Whirlwind Dr., San Antonio, TX 78217
Thu: 5pm–10pm | Fri: 5pm–12am Sat: 5pm–1am
Thu–Fri: 5pm–9pm | Sat: 2pm–9pm Sun: 12pm–4pm
www.dorcolspirits.com
drinkrangercreek.com
ISLLA ST. BREWING CO.
ROADMAP BREWING CO.
11911 Crosswinds Way, San Antonio, TX 78233
723 N. Alamo St., San Antonio, TX 78215
Fri-Sun: 12pm–10pm
Wed–Thu: 4pm–10pm | Fri: 4pm–12am Sat: 12pm–12am | Sun: 12pm–8pm
isllastreetbrewing.com
www.roadmapbrewing.com
KÜNSTLER BREWING CO.
WEATHERED SOULS BREWING CO.
302 E. LaChapelle, San Antonio, TX 78204
606 Embassy Oaks, Ste. 500, San Antonio, TX 78216
Mon–Wed: 4pm–10pm | Thu: 4pm–12am Fri: 2pm–12am | Sat: 11am–12am Sun: 11am–10pm
Tue-Wed: 4pm–10pm | Thu: 11am–10pm Fri: 11am–11pm | Sat: 12pm–12am Sun: 1pm–8pm
kunstlerbrewing.com
weatheredsouls.beer
MAD PECKER BREWING CO. 6025 Tezel Rd., San Antonio, TX 78250 Mon-Fri: 4pm–12am | Sat-Sun: 12pm–12am madpeckerbrewing.com
SOUTHERLEIGH FINE FOOD & BREWERY 136 E. Grayson St. #120, San Antonio, TX 78215 Mon–Thu: 11am–10pm | Fri: 11am–11pm Sat: 10am–11pm | Sun: 10am–9pm southerleigh.com
SEGU I N BS BREWING CO.
SEGUIN BREWING COMPANY
1408 Old Lehmanns Rd., Seguin, TX 78155
111 W. Gonzales St., Seguin, TX 78155
Fri: 5pm–9pm | Sat–Sun: 2pm–8pm
Mon–Tue: 3pm–8pm | Wed–Thu: 3pm–10pm Fri–Sat: 12pm–10pm | Sun: 12pm–6pm
bsbrewingtx.com
seguinbrewing.com
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