Beer Across Texas

An excellent website and blog for Texas beer enthusiasts. I just picked up the book, but have yet to really sit down to examine it. More on that later. For now enjoy all the beer news from New Braunfels resident, Travis E. Poling.

Yard House

Though I haven't been yet, I suppose I will soon. The Shops at La Cantera are actually quite nice in that snooty sort of way (though their website is absolutely disgusting). Actually, let me rephrase that. The landscaping is very well-done (who cares about the stores?) -- lots of Texas natives and stone and fountains. It's outside and a comfortable, relaxed place to  people watch. Especially if you can sit at a bar and do it.

Now there's one more place for just such an expensive endeavor. Here's a list of their beers (I count 113; around 99 on the Flying Saucer site with more than that in the bottle), which is not exactly inspired considering they claim the "World's Largest Selection of Draft Beer" (that just doesn't sound right). As Steve at All Good Beer points out in one of his posts, there is a real lack of Texas beer available (four Shiners, two Real Ales, and one Saint Arnold), which is a shame considering that Freetail, one of San Antonio's two microbrews, offers not only a great selection of their own beer (right around 13 at any given time), but a good selection of other Texas beer and wine (somewhere around six or seven other Texas brews). Their philosophy of loyalty to local fare is laudable and should be imitated, not ignored.

Still, I guess if the folks feel like the usual crazy Black Friday jaunt up to The Shops at La Cantera, I'll convince my dad to stop in for a brew with me. I'm sure there's plenty of oogling to be done with a mouth full of beer.

Freetail in the Fall

The doors are open and the sunlight coming in through the huge garage door bar window makes the interior bright and dark at the same time.

• Freeloader Browne -- $4.25, 5.6%, 38 IBU. This has a nice brown bite to it. Nutty and full flavored.
• Hypothesis A.: $6.50, 12.4%, 125+ IBU. The hoppiest beer that I have ever had, hands down. It's served in a barley wine glass and from the moment it hits your nose to it's nearly chili-like burn down your esophagus, you'll be saying, dear hoppy God. It quickly spreads across the back of your tongue and lingers so sublimely. Great stuff that mellows slightly as it warms up. Just slightly.
• Hop Brutality: $5.25, 6.9%, 80 IBU. Deliciously hoppy, but, of course, nothing like Hypothesis A. A great drinking beer.

I love this place. I wish it was so much closer. It would take me a half the day to get up there on my scooter. Might have to try it all the same.

Taco Land

An interesting little retrospective by NPR of Taco Land and Ram in particular. I remember going to see the Shit City Dream Girls. Excellent stuff. And what a spectacular place, though I didn't really ever meet Ram, except to buy a beer. Too bad they haven't opened it up again, but I understand why: Ram's personality was the place: now it's a shrine.

Beer in Texas

Short blog on the history of beer in Texas. Needs fact checking and grammar work, but the gist of it seems kosher.

Blue Star Brewery

A couple of new beers on the board at Blue Star:
1. Pomegranate Ale: As my friend said -- an ale that got a little out of hand and thus infused with pomegranate. It's a little sweet and over-carbonated (as the waitress noted right away), but not bad. It sits heavy at the back of the tongue.
2. Cask Conditioned Dry Hopped Stout: No aftertaste to this one. It does have a vaguely hoppy taste which is quite a nice complement to the bitterness of the stout (the hoppy bitter hits you further back on the tongue). Not bad.

The Pale Ale is good. A tiny bit fruity, but no skunky aftertaste. Not particularly hoppy either, but very good. Their beer has improved tremendously and I love heading over there on a Monday night for football and some chitchat.

The Esquire

The Esquire adorned San Antonio like a pair of jeans. It was the only real bar on the river (one that the tourists would miss unless they were paying attention and interested enough in shady places). It also boasted the longest bar in Texas, making it, according to a September 28, 2006 Express-News article ("Last Call for the Esquire Tavern"), into Ripley's Believe It or Not (we'll believe it) for being able to hold 5,973 Lone Star longnecks on it's wooden surface. That is a hell of a lot of longnecks. And you know that they were gone by the morning -- or at least their contents were. Sadly, the bar dating back to 1933 closed their doors (ostensibly for renovations -- it's been three years) on the day before the article ran -- a Wednesday of all days (not that it mattered a whole lot there though: People flocked to it like kids to an ice cream truck). A couple of other tidbits from that same article:

• "If they get rid of the wallpaper, I'm moving out of town," Chuck Ramirez, San Antonio native and visual artist, said dramatically. Indeed, the gaudy wallpaper is as much a fixture as is the famous 12-by-5-foot Mahncke Hotel painting fished out of the San Antonio River during the Great Flood of 1921 that hangs proudly above the jukebox.
  
• The Esquire will be closed for at least 18 months for a $1.8 million renovation, which will more than double the square footage and includes gutting the space, remodeling and adding a restaurant downstairs. Plans are to return as a family friendly destination, renamed Tavern Esquire and BBQ House.
  

I remember when I first moved down here in 1999, I got all dressed up (read: slacks and a tucked in button down shirt) for a job interview. It didn't go very well. I don't even remember what the job was or where downtown, but I do remember drowning my sorrows at the Esquire. I stood at the bar with the vaqueros and pioneers and the drunks and had a shot of well tequila and a 16 oz lone star. It just barely broke the two dollar mark, if I remember correctly. I tipped and laid down the change from my twenty and drank until it was gone. Alas, those days are gone (as are the ones of my brother puking under the table years later from the same said tequila while someone distracted the waiter). I never bought a shirt that read, "You got frisked at The Esquire" because I never thought I wouldn't be able to buy one.

Most recently (January 10, 2009), an Express-News article ("Group Backs Plan to Raze Annex") had this to say: "Also Friday, the [Historic and Design Review C]ommission approved conceptual renovation plans for the Esquire Tavern, which dates to 1933 and has long been known as a popular watering hole by the River Walk. Davis Sprinkle, project architect, said the tavern at 151 E. Commerce St. and its features, including its exterior tile and neon sign and elongated wooden bar, would be kept intact but made to look as good as new." As far as I can tell Davis Sprinkle is a part of the Sprinkle Robey Architecture firm, though there is no mention of the project on the website.

I have a bad feeling that the Esquire is kaput for the foreseeable future.