This sounds perfect for people watching. Shall be funny to see the face of the person expecting a Blue Moon taste when they get a mouthful of hops!

How long after you get the sewer connections and everything hooked up do you think it will be before you will have tours and a tasting room open?

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I used to throw in a few % Cara-Pils in almost all of our lighter colored recipes, but more and more I'm finding mashing a bit higher accomplishes the same goal since Cara-Pils/Foam is really just increasing the Dextrin content of the wort. Our Pilsner is just 100% Pilsner malt, but mashing at 154-155F seemed to really give us fantastic, lasting foam. Don't get me wrong, Cara-Pils works, but I've always liked the idea of keeping things simple whenever possible.

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What do you mash your IPA's at? In San Diego it's mostly done 149-150 to give a very simple wort that 001 yeast can chow down on and result in a simply malt body in the background and a punch in the face hop profile up front.

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As far as the wheat I've never really noticed it helping THAT much when in small %'s, but when it makes up 50% of the grain bill the foam is almost always beautiful.

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50% wheat is crazy...are you using flaked? How do you avoid stuck mashes?

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Good point, and we've already had a bit of that.

With that said, the high protein content from the wheat and all those dry-hops keeps it plenty cloudy!

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Clarity Ferm

Can help clear a beer and adding gelatine will also reduce hop haze. A double shot of Clarity Ferm will also reduce gluten content to nearly zero so those with a condition can enjoy it.

I'm curious as to how cloudy your wheat IPA is, any pics from pilot batches?

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This sounds perfect for people watching. Shall be funny to see the face of the person expecting a Blue Moon taste when they get a mouthful of hops!

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This has definitely happened once or twice amongst our non-craft drinking friends!

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How long after you get the sewer connections and everything hooked up do you think it will be before you will have tours and a tasting room open?

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We decided to actually lager the Pilsner, so I'm expecting that to add a week or two to fermentation, but I'm thinking mid-late January assuming no more problems (big assumption though!)

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What do you mash your IPA's at? In San Diego it's mostly done 149-150 to give a very simple wort that 001 yeast can chow down on and result in a simply malt body in the background and a punch in the face hop profile up front.

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It depends, but we usually do mash pretty low w/ our IPAs because there are already plenty of unfermentable sugars from the crystal malts. My suggestion to mash higher was more for beers w/ simple grain bills like our Pils that is just 100% Pilsner malt.

With that said, we've tried several different yeast strains for our IPA w/ various attenuation limits, so we'll often try to manipulate mash temperature/PH/etc to get the yeast to perform the way we want. For example, we tried brewing our IPA w/ the Fuller's ESB strain that maxes out around 71% attenuation. For that beer we mashed very low and thinned out the mash a bit to hopefully dry things out. We ended up getting close to 75% AA, so it at least appeared to work. It still came out "sweet" compared to Chico though, so we'll probably stick with it!

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50% wheat is crazy...are you using flaked? How do you avoid stuck mashes?

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We've been using just standard Briess Wheat Malt. We normally use rice hulls, but I forgot last time and the run-off ended up being fine. This was on our pilot system though, so I definitely won't forget on our 20 BBL!

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Can help clear a beer and adding gelatine will also reduce hop haze. A double shot of Clarity Ferm will also reduce gluten content to nearly zero so those with a condition can enjoy it.

I'm curious as to how cloudy your wheat IPA is, any pics from pilot batches?

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Interesting about the gluten reduction, I'll have to look into that! We're planning on using Biofine Clear for fining only because it's vegan-friendly. We're by no means vegan or anywhere close to it, but I would hate to lose potential customers over a fining agent. More importantly Biofine has been getting good reviews from other brewers.

I wish I had some better pics, but there is one on the home page of our website. This batch actually turned out really, really clear, but that's partially because of the ESB yeast and this particular keg had been sitting in cold storage for a couple months. I'd say typically the haziness is in-line w/ most dry-hopped, un-filtered IPAs, however.

WhiteLabs will not state it reduces all gluten but a little birdy I know says with a double dose the testing of the residual beer comes out to nearly zero for gluten content. That's 'unofficial', and several newer breweries out here are using it and the gluten intollerant crowd loves 'em.

By the way, if you end up in San Diego on a company research junket let me know and I'll give you the heads up on where to go. And it isn't Stone or Green Flash *gag*.

Good timing on the bump! The city told us they'd be done w/ the sewer by the end of this week. We'll likely run some water brews next week, so here's to hoping we're actually brewing beer in a week or two!

Saw on Facebook y'all got the sign up. Sewer yet?

Once again they were wrong on timing, but the piping is coming down our street now so it's at least progressing (albeit slow as all hell).

I'm feeling the need for some kind of celebratory "sewer" beer...

Clearly a stout? Possibly, take a lesson from New Belgium, and possibly do a curry stout.

Just wanted to update. After a lot of patience and waiting on things out of our control, finally got to brew the first batch on Friday!

We went with the Pils since the grain bill is simple and the lager yeast takes a little longer to finish up. Everything went pretty damn well and I couldn't be more pleased for the first run on a new system. We calculated the recipe out expecting slightly lower efficiency given the first run and ended up hitting 92% which is damn near maxing out the potential on a brewhouse like this, so expect a slightly higher ABV than will be normal.

A buddy of mine took a bunch of pics, so I'll get some up on Facebook and here as soon as he gets them to me. Can't wait to have all three beers rockin and get yall out to see us!

Milling in


935 pounds of Pilsner malt all mashed in.



Whirlpool hop addition.



My brother and I watching the whirlpool after the hop addition. Smelled freaking amazing!



Knocking out the boiling wort to 50F.



Transferring into tank "Alpha". After pitching the yeast, we had steady CO2 blow-off at about 24 hours and it's rockin along now! We're expecting about 21 days from grain to glass.




[This message has been edited by jock itch (edited 3/18/2014 8:28a).]

Now that you have one fermenting, what does the timeline look like to be open to the public? When do you anticipate brewing the other beers?

Just ordered yeast for the next two beers this morning which should get here early next week. We've changed the other two beers around a lot, and ended up going w/ a "session" wheat IPA and a black rye saison. Never brewed the saison before but figured why not!

The principal investors originally wanted all three beers to be ready at the same time to open the tap room and start tours, but I convinced them to release the beers to retail accounts as they become ready. Once all three are available, we'll go ahead and open to the public. I'm thinking about 14 days for the IPA and 21-28 days for the saison since it's a little higher ABV.

And when is the private TexAgs tour and tasting?

Congrats! Can't wait to taste the brews!

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Congrats! Can't wait to taste the brews!

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This...

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And when is the private TexAgs tour and tasting?

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and this...

My vote is for a true unfiltered heffenwiezen. Fell in love with them in Munich, on tour of spaten brewery.

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Congrats! Can't wait to taste the brews!

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This...

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And when is the private TexAgs tour and tasting?

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and this...

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This.

Can't wait!

Where is the brewery again?

Good timing on the bump as we just set our opening date. We're going to be at the Wild West Brewfest in Katy this weekend, and will most likely (90%+) open up to the public the following weekend of the 17th. Still waiting on label approval from TABC, but I'm hoping we'll get that back this week so expect to see us in bars/restaurants soon!

As far as location, we're just off 105 right before you reach the lake (coming from 45). You'll take a left on Blake Rd., then take your very first left on Milroy. After that you shouldn't be able to miss us, but we did finally get on Google maps, so you can always plug us into GPS if you have any trouble.

Looking forward to seeing yall out here. My name's Chad, so if you run into me let me know!

[This message has been edited by jock itch (edited 5/5/2014 2:50p).]

Oh and just a little fun info: I apparently mis-calculated alcohol potential because our Rye Saison came in at 9.2% ABV from the lab analysis. Definitely a sneaky one given the extremely light color.

9.2 a nice low alcohol session beer.

So much for a sessionable, summer beer. Oops!

Had a small party for friends and family this weekend so we could screw up and not be blasted for it. A friend of mine took these aerial photos which I thought were pretty cool!

We won't blast you, either

Awesome. Looking forward checking your brewery out.

One question. If we were to set up a Texags gathering at the brewery one day, would we be able to do a bottle share while there after we enjoy your beers?