17. January 2010 by Brother Spargealot.

Southern Star Brewing in Conroe Texas, just north of Houston continues to grow with the recent addition of four new fermenters (two used and two new) thereby more than doubling their capacity.  At this point they are brewing three times a day back to back on their 15 bbl brewhouse. They are also hoping to secure an automated canning line soon as they are still doing it manually two at a time and might soon need to schedule people to work around the clock to keep up with demand. In addition to the tallboys of Pine Belt Pale Ale and 12oz cans of the Blonde, the company recently launched its Buried Hatchet Stout in the form of a 12oz four pack which they say has been very well received. Tours on Saturdays now attract over one hundred people and gone are the days of unlimited sampling. Each person of age gets four tokens. Also note they have food at reasonable prices provided during every tour now. So what’s next? The boys are working on a double IPA recipe which might possibly be named Invisible Monkey, but a launch date remains uncertain. What is certain is that there will be another homebrew competition to find their 2010 GABF Pro-Am entry in late March or early April. Once they determine the date and details I will relay the information via this blog as well as to area homebrew clubs. See http://www.southernstarbrewing.com/ for more information.

In other area news, Brian of Southern Star also relayed that another local homebrewer is likely to open a brewpub in the Woodlands perhaps later this year. While many rumors of this sort usually fizzle out, Brian claims the person will follow through as they have financing and are starting to scout the area in order to secure a long term lease possibly near I-45.

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13. January 2010 by Brother Spargealot.

The Parlor will not brew their own beer as was originally suggested (a report that appeared dubious from the onset). Employees note the owners had considered the prospect but decided it would be too difficult to build out the required space (and they probably also discovered making beer is not a cheap endeavor involving lots of red tape). To that end the idea now is to have their own private label brands of beer made by another established brewery, similar to what St. Arnold does for BJ’s in Texas but on a much, much smaller scale. Stay tuned…

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13. January 2010 by Brother Spargealot.

Just for fun we traveled to two on-again off-again brewpubs located between San Antonio and Austin over the past weekend. Wimberley Brewing Company (owned by former San Francisco 49er Bruce Collie) opened in February of last year only to close its doors in the Fall. http://wimberleybrewingcompany.com/ According to the website and blogs the restaurant was leased out to its German chef and renamed the Black Forest (sans brewpub) and Collie (who owns the strip center known as The Junction) hopes to build a new smaller facility for the brewpub on vacant land nearby. When stopping by last week a gentleman at the Blackforest confirmed that Collie continues to talk about opening another brewpub in the center and a date of January 8th was suggested. But given it was January 10th and there were no new build outs in the area the prospect of a near term restart of the facility seemed unlikely to the employee.  In a similar vein, The Faust Brewpub suffered through a spate of shutdowns, running out of beer, receiving poor reviews and more recently the sale of the hotel within which the brewpub is based. As of last Sunday an employee at The Faust confirmed that the new owners intend to start brewing again, and the equipment is still on-site and readily visible behind the check in counter in the lobby. The delay according to the employee remains the securing of necessary TABC permits to operate. Unfortunately he had no idea as to when those permits might be secured or when brewing might begin once again. http://www.fausthotel.com/brewcompany.html

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