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BEER & LOATHING<br />
Off-River Drinkin’<br />
in New Braunfels<br />
by CHRIS TROUTMAN<br />
IN LATE SPRING THE FOUR OF US PLUS OUR<br />
good friend Bryan Gutmann ditched our wives,<br />
fiances, kids, and regular Sunday afternoon<br />
inhibitions and piled into a Honda hybrid (at<br />
the time we were considering theme-ing this<br />
issue the “green issue,” yeah, it didn’t pan out)<br />
with our sails set for New Braunfels. We were<br />
sick and tired of drinking in boring old regular<br />
Braunfels and we needed something new.<br />
Being it was only mid-spring and still<br />
a little bit chilly, we were on a mission to find<br />
some of the best dry drinking spots in that very<br />
wet town. Tubing was not on the agenda.<br />
We hit I-35 right about 1pm with our<br />
bellies full from our yummy <strong>Austin</strong> <strong>Beer</strong> <strong>Guide</strong><br />
family Sunday brunch at <strong>Co</strong>ntigo (dropping this<br />
sentence hoping to get some extra flap jacks in<br />
my next short stack *wink wink*). Bright-eyed<br />
and bushy-tailed, we made quick time of the 50<br />
odd miles whilst forcing Siri to pull up various<br />
breweries’ and bars’ phone numbers for us as<br />
we haphazardly called and left our “credentials”<br />
via voicemail hoping for some free beer when<br />
we arrived.<br />
It worked.<br />
Our first stop was at the brand new<br />
Guadalupe <strong>Brewing</strong> <strong>Co</strong>. We met up with<br />
brewer and founder Hunter Weilbacher at<br />
the brewery after meeting him the previous<br />
week at Whip In’s anniversary party where<br />
he was serving his Honey Ale. Hunter was a<br />
very gracious host and let us try nine of his<br />
latest beers brewed on his “frankenbrew” 4<br />
barrel brewhouse. Everything was amazing<br />
for a brand new brewery, but the Czech-style<br />
pilsner and Austrian-style pilsner were close<br />
to some of the better Texas made Europeanstyle<br />
pilsners these <strong>Austin</strong> <strong>Beer</strong> <strong>Guide</strong> palates<br />
have ever savored. After we were satisfactorily<br />
quaffed, he brought out samples of his Grand<br />
Cru and bourbon oak aged scotch ale. Both<br />
were like Venus’ Transit over our tongues. As<br />
of press they do not offer public tours, so this<br />
is not so much a stop that you could make
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