Its the first Friday of the month, which means its Session Time. The host this month is Rick over at Lyke 2 Drink, the theme is the Brew Zoo. The idea is to pick a beer with an animal theme to it. With that in mind I searched high and low in trying to find a local Texas beer. I originally thought of Rahr and Son's Ugly Pug, a very nice Black lager, but I eventually settled on a small brewery from Austin, Independence Brewery. The beer was Old Jasperillo was named after the brewers old dog and features its likeness on the bottle.
The Brewery: The head brewer Rob Cartwright, a Canadian by birth, has been brewing since he was 14 years old! This was due to his parents trying to save money on beer because of the high beer taxes in his native Victoria, British Columbia. Eventually he headed down to the Lone Star State for college at University of Texas. During this time he started working at the Copper Tank where he learned the art of brewing from various mentors. It was at this time that Rob started getting that dream that all brewers get, opening up his own brewery. That has now been realized, and Independence Brewery has been running for a little while turning out some fine Texas brew.
The Beer: As mentioned above its named after the owners dog, is an Old Ale and comes in a 22 oz bottle. This may be the only Texas micro brew to come in a Big Bottle format. The Beer weighs in at 9% and pours a nice copper brown with a somewhat thin bubbly head. I have to admit I was pretty excited to try this beer as it seemed pretty unique in comparison to some of the other Texas Brews out there. Unfortunately my excitement was short lived. The nose was incredibly rich with floral notes, bready yeasts, sweet malts, warm caramel, and fermented fruit. It sounded good until I took my first taste, which was sickly sweet and full of fermented pears. I'm not sure if this was a bad bottle or not, but I was clearly disappointed. There were hints of goodness but they were far out shown by the bad. A C- for this beer. The folks over at BA have varying opinions.
I know this tasting was a disappointment, but I know that there are plenty of other members of the Brew Zoo to go check out. So head over to Rick's posting to see all the other wild animals.
2 comments:
Aaahhh... another Houston beer blogger. I live in NW, up near Willowbrook Mall. You?
I always love to take a trip to Austin. The Whip In is a favorite spot over there for me to stop and pick up beer. Good beer places are getting harder to find around here it seems. Specs is OK, but the place I really miss is Lucas (it was out on I-10 west of town).
I'm actually in downtown, near the old compaq center. There are still a couple of places to get good beer, Spec's and even Whole Foods and Central market has a pretty good selection. The problem is that they are limited to what distributors can get due to the crazy labeling laws of Texas....but thats for another post.
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