Website and Trailer are Complete!
It's coming up on two years since I started shooting "The Craft of Craft Beer". Huge thanks to the folks at Real Ale, Jester King, Live Oak, and Middleton for letting me invade their environments. My goal was to choose four unique and respected breweries in Central Texas that covered a range of sizes and specialties.
Real Ale is one of the larger, most successful breweries in the area, and they've been around since the mid-90's. They brew a wide variety of beers, a huge portfolio that includes everything from very approachable session beers to barrel-aged sippers; but most fall into the traditional ale category. They package in cans and bottles and use a large distributor. Being able to capture their 20th Anniversary "Rye-union" was a real treat, seeing former brewers and employees come in from all over the country to help them celebrate.
Live Oak has been brewing almost as long as Real Ale; but while they do brew some fine ales, they specialize in lagers, which use a different type of yeast and require more aging time. They package in cans and are a self-distributing brewery. One of the interesting things about shooting the Pilz brew day in their brand new facility was that I was able to shoot the same brew at their old location a few years ago when I was making "Brewed In Austin". This film includes some of that old footage, so you can see the difference in working environments. They went from the most archaic brewery in the city to one of the most beautiful facilities in Texas.
Jester King is a relatively new brewery, opening in 2010. Their specialty are farmhouse ales, based off the breweries in rural Belgium that use as many ingredients from the land around them as possible, including the wild yeast in the air. These beers tend to be tart, sour, and or just plain funky. Who knew "horse blanket" would be a note one would look for in a beer? These guys are really making a reputation for themselves, here in the U.S. and abroad, and their desire for experimentation is commendable. Brewing a beer that is inoculated by 100% wild yeast and bacteria from the Texas hill country takes a lot of guts! They sell most of their beer onsite.
A completely different Belgian style of brewing follows the monastic tradition. For centuries, monks were the only ones to brew this yeast-driven style of beer, but the secular world has definitely caught on. In my opinion, the ten-barrel Middleton neighborhood brewpub in the little artistic community of Wimberley, Tx. produces some of the finest monastic style beers in the country. It started out as a retirement project for Dennis and Kim Middleton, who were working on a one barrel system. But the demand was so high, they expanded after only a few years.
Thanks for checking out the site. I'll use this blog to post updates on the progress of the film, which should be completed this coming Spring. I promise to keep the posts shorter than this first one, though...Cheers!