Independence Brewery
TRP first visited Independence Brewery in February 2012. We actually had very lucky timing, the night before a friend from Lawrence put us in touch with a local friend who let us know that they are only open the first Saturday of the month, which just happened to be the following day… score! Sometimes beer has a way of being serendipitous for us. So off we went to visit the brewery.
We arrived just around noon when the brewery was scheduled to open and were shocked to find a line wrapped around the building. It actually wasn’t even wrapped around the brewery building, it was much much longer than that. The brewery is situated in a business type/industrial area and the line actually wrapped around other business offices. I was excited at first thinking this was more of a planned festival for the day but was amazed to find out this was a normal 1st Saturday for the brewery. Being newbies we soon found out that when you visit the brewery you get 3 free samples out of a sample glass or you can purchase an Independence Pint glass and get larger “free” samples. Schwing! That sounded good to me, so we ended up getting 2 pint glasses (more on those later) and sample we did!
We had the opportunity to sample a few of Independence Brewery signature beers including a newly revised recipe to their StacheIPA, the Convict Hill, their 8% Oatmeal Stout, the Austin Amber and the Bootlegger Brown. We really enjoyed all of the ones we tried, especially liking the IPA. The aroma and final hop character is exactly the type of citrus hop Maria prefers. Brian is growing to like them all, even the bitter ones.
Upon doing research for this post we came to find out that giving away free samples wasn’t just something Independence Brewery was doing out of the kindness of their heart (well kind of) but it was actually more of a necessity to help get the word out on their beers due to some horribly written rules the Texas Alcohol Beverage Control has regulating beer sales and terminology in the State of Texas. Luckily, with the help of Open the Taps and other prominent craft breweries in the area, recent lawsuits against the TABC is looking to rectify the situation. Previous regulations state that only brewpubs can sell beer in their establishments, but are prohibited to use a reseller to distribute their beer (aka TX brewpubs can’t bottle and distribute) whereas breweries are not permitted to sell beer on premise at all, they must use a reseller and up until recently breweries could not even tell their customers where to find their beer. It was quite the predicament craft breweries had, with no real justification for why the TABC felt they needed to draw these lines.
TABC regulations or not, I couldn’t have been more pleased to visit Independence Brewery and get free samples. It’s honestly the only brewery we’ve ever been to that held such an event and it was great meeting a bunch of new people, doing what we love best, drinking beer outside with other craft beer fans. We had a great afternoon and if you can manage to schedule your trip to Austin around the first Saturday of the month, I would highly recommend it!!
Enter for your chance to win our Independence Brewery pint glasses! We will even wash them for you before we ship them. Comment on our post below to tell us why you love Independence Brewery or why you plan to visit/get their beer for your chance to win!
