Shiner Dortmunder and the Shiner Brewery Excursion

It's December 27, 2010 and Happy Birthday Dad! Momma Davis, Grandma DuBose, myself and the birthday boy piled into the car for my much anticipated excursion to Shiner, Texas and the delicious brewery bears the town name.

After taking a route through several teeny tiny Texas towns, we ended up in Shiner in time for a quick lunch before the tour at Friday's Fried Chicken & Pastry (would you expect anything else from a small Texas town?)

Look at that! A bakery down below and Fried Chicken underneath the blue sign. This is what a famous small town restaurant is all about, I love it. I got the Catfish Po-Boy and their Crazy Taters, because that's what they're known for:

CRAZY TATERS!!!

 We sat in the John Wayne corner, literally, surrounded by portraits of John Wayne. Here are two, you may count them as your American Hero tribute for today and remember, only terrorists don't salute The Duke.

With fried deliciousness filling our bellies, Momma Davis dropped Platt 3rd and Platt 4th off at the Shiner brewery and set off to return Grandma Dubose to her abode in Gonzales (birthplace of the Texas Revolution, as I'm sure you know).

I was so excited! I have been thinking about coming to this town for at least two months and here I was at the Spoetzl Brewery.

There were a fair amount of people there, maybe 60 or 70 and we actually had to wait in line for the tour, which proved informative. As nice as the folks at Shiner were, they wouldn't let me photo or video any of the brewery, so you'll have to do with my facts.

They have fermentation tanks that are 2 stories tall, which is a ginormous amount of beer. They can regulate the temperatures at each stage of the process from coils inside the tanks so they never have to transfer the beer. What I found interesting about the location of the brewery is that they specifically built it next to train tracks so they could directly offload grain into the factory, which they also built on an Artisan Well (so they didn't have to pump out the water, it came up to the surface naturally). Seeing as how water plays a major part in the brewing process, this is a prime location. Watching the bottling process was pretty damn fascinating. They fill 600 bottles a minute (10 bottles a second). Cool stuff.

After the tour, the brewery offered us 4 free drink tokens to choose between 6 different beers. Today we were in for a real treat though:

The above cup holds Shiner Dortmunder and it is brand spanking new. They haven't even bottled any of this beer and only had a few kegs. Hot damn, nice timing! It's their spring ale and will be out in stores in a couple months, and I'm crossing my fingers it'll be in California because it's great.

The Dortmunder is malty with light floral notes and German hops provide a pleasant bitter note as it finishes. The bitter note at the end is enough to define the character but isn't enough enough to undermine smoothness. It's pretty damn pleasant. Dad remarks that he could drink a lot of this and I agree. TRANSFORMERS rating.

It was a really fun day to spend with my dad. We saw a bunch of Texas country (and funny billboards), ate a bunch of small town greasy food, saw beer being made and then drank it. A fun little excursion to say the least. Thanks Dad and Momma D for driving, really made my week. Happy Birthday Dad!

Guess whose idea it was to make him wear the hat? Love'n it