Running Walker Beer has put together a great beer that you should be drinking on this Halloween night. Ooky Spooky is an Imperial Stout with dark chocolate, cinnamon, and pumpkin. The nose alone should be a candle and I’d light that candle year round. You get chocolate and pumpkin but also a bit nutty on the nose as well. This beer is as fall and Halloween as it can get with the dark chocolate coming in smooth and doesn’t over power the pumpkin flavor. What I really enjoyed about Ooky Spooky is that the cinnamon is not overwhelming and gives a small spice taste without drying the mouth. The base of the Imperial Stout holds a beautiful roast on the taste backend that makes the dark chocolate and pumpkin really pop. Like an added chocolate to your favorite pumpkin spiced coffee. I’m told by the brewers Tony and Chris that they are doing a few candy bar themed stouts for Halloween weekend. You better get there before I drink them all if you want to enjoy them.

The post Ooky Spooky : An Imperial Stout from Running Walker first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Ooky Spooky : An Imperial Stout from Running Walker appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

(Click here to for a zoomable version)

Yo that IPA Region is stacked! Mostly Harmless got screwed, though. Pumpkinator vs. Rocket Fuel in the Sweet 16 is gonna be brutal. I’ve got EZ7 as my Cinderella. Think Yellow Rose can win it all again?

Welcome to the 2017 edition of the Houston Beer Guide Bracket. Last year’s bracket was a blast, with some nail-biters, a ballot-stuffing scandal, a handful of upsets, and Lone Pint Yellow Rose ultimately cruising to the title.

We’ve made some changes compared to last year, when we used weighted Untappd rankings to fill out the field from 1 to 64. This year, we still leaned on ratings, but we also opened up the selection process to the HBG staff, our own version of the NCAA’s selection committee. We awarded “automatic bids” to breweries that wouldn’t have qualified based solely on rankings. We eliminated one-time releases (no Divine Reserves, Bishop’s Barrels, etc.). And we limited the field to independent craft breweries — you know what that means.

Enough with the pregame analysis. Let’s get to the #HBGBracket. Voting for the first round ends Monday night, March 20th. The second round will begin Tuesday, March 21st. We’ll update results on Facebook and Twitter.

Update #1 – Round of 64 recap:
The first round has wrapped up and there were quite a few surprises. 12-seed SpindleTap Hop Gusher took down 5-seed Saint Arnold Endeavour, with a respectable win of 56%. In our far north vs. far south matchup, 14-seed B-52 Double IPA beat 3-seed Galveston Island Citra Mellow. Copperhead King of Terrors managed to eke out a win against Buffalo Bayou Vanilla Mocha Sunset, in a match decided by just 13 votes. In the battle of Clear Lake, Texas Beer Refinery’s Gulf Coast Gose held its ground against BAKFISH I Tell You Wit. Unfortunately, Texas Beer Refinery Catalyst wasn’t able to repeat last year’s Cinderella run. Yellow Rose continued last year’s tradition of dominating the competition, knocking out newcomer Running Walker Texas Reserve. Check out the rest of the results at the bottom of the page.

Update #2 – Round of 32 recap:
Well that was certainly interesting. The majority of this round went to chalk, with the 1-seeds doing especially well. Dig into the middle of the field a little bit, and you’ll see some very surprising results. 12-seed SpindleTap Hop Gusher continued its Cinderella run, leading 4-seed Brash Pussy Wagon the entire round. At the 24-hour mark, Brash Vulgar Display of Power vs Brash Cortado was exactly 50/50, but lower-seeded VDoP eventually won out. 11-seed Copperhead King of Terrors managed another narrow victory, this time over 3-seed No Label Nightmare on 1st Street. There were no upsets in the Easy Drinking region, dashing the chances of a Pilsner head-to-head between Back Pew and Saint Arnold. How will old-standard Buried Hatchet fare against new-hotness Raspberry AF in the next round? Last year’s champion, Lone Pint Yellow Rose, faces Cinderella; is there a stunning upset on the horizon? Will King of Terrors be able to sneak past Brash EZ-7 and into the Elite 8? It’s all up to you.

Update #3 – Sweet 16 recap:
Let’s start with the fun parts: Almost every one of the match up in the Sweet 16 ended within 100 votes. For nearly 1,500 votes, that’s pretty impressive. Brazos Valley 7 Spanish Angels overcame Saint Arnold 5 O’Clock Pils by 107 votes, 4-seed Lone Pint The Jabberwocky upset 1-seed Brash Abide with 92 votes, Saloon Door Tasty AF beat Brash Vulgar Display of Power by 39 votes, and Pumpkinator vs Rocket Fuel was decided by just 32 votes. Every beer included in the Sweet 16 deserved it’s place this far into the tournament. SpindleTap found a post in one of the beer groups by someone bragging to have voted for Hop Gusher several hundred times in a short period Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to undo the damage that was done. After a discussion with the team at SpindleTap, they offered to forfeit the game to Yellow Rose. At the T-11 hour mark, SpindleTap had the lead, and they appeared to gain more ground in the morning. As stated earlier, we believe that every beer that made it to the sweet 16 deserved to be there. Hop Gusher beat Endeavour and Pussy Wagon without any intervention, and there is a very strong likelihood that it would have beat Yellow Rose as well. Yellow Rose faces some stiff competition in the next round with Saint Arnold Art Car, as do all of the beers in the Elite 8.

Update #4 – Elite 8 recap:
The giants have fallen. Saloon Door rounded up their supporters to knock out 1-seed Saint Arnold Pumpkinator. Brazos Valley had a late surge of support: 7 Spanish Angels rallied from being down 49/51 at the 24 hour mark to come out ahead 54/46 and take out 1-seed Southern Star Buried Hatchet. 1-seed Yellow Rose clobbered 2-seed Art Car in a round that was expected to be more of a challenge for last year’s champion. Brash’s 7-seed EZ-7 avenged 1-seed Abide’s earlier elimination and trounced Lone Pint The Jabberwocky. Lone Pint Yellow Rose is the only 1-seed that remains in the tournament – how will it fare against the Saloon Door posse, which has already overcome some quite impressive opponents? Will EZ-7 or 7 Spanish Angels be the lucky one to advance to the finals?

Update #5 – Final Four recap:
Yellow Rose, our last 1-seed and last year’s champion was bested by the chocolate & peanut butter stout from Clear Lake, Tasty AF. 7 Spanish Angels, the coffee brown ale from Brenham, rallied its supporters to eliminate Brash EZ-7. It’s all come down to this: Saloon Door Tasty AF versus Brazos Valley 7 Spanish Angels. Peanut butter & chocolate vs coffee. Both beers eliminated some very impressive challengers along the way. Which beer will be crowned the best beer in Houston by the readers of Houston Beer Guide?

Update #6 – Championship recap:
Wow, that was a surprisingly close match. Saloon Door’s Tasty AF is now the reigning ‘Best Beer in Houston’ as chosen by the readers of Houston Beer Guide. If you haven’t tried it or any of the other 63 beers included in this year’s bracket, I highly recommend that you seek them out.

The changes we made to the beer selection process this year were a direct result of the conversations we had with our readers last year. If you have suggestions for ways we can make it even better next year, shoot us an email, we’d love to hear your ideas: info@houstonbeerguide.com.

Championship Results:

Saloon Door v Brazos Valley (1,800 votes)
Tasty AF – 51.3%
7 Spanish Angels – 48.7%

The Final Four Results:

Elite 8 Results:

Sweet 16 Results:

Round of 32 Results:

Round of 64 Results:

The post Houston Beer Guide Bracket 2017 first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Houston Beer Guide Bracket 2017 appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Image: Copperhead Brewery

Copperhead Brewing Company

Late last year, I had the pleasure to visit Copperhead Brewing in Conroe, and was pleased to try five of their beers, two of which, Striker IPA & Copperhead White, are now being bottled. They join Medusa, a Belgian Dark Strong, as Copperhead’s initial distribution bottles. I’m particularly pleased that the White was chosen as one of the three, as I found it to be rather refreshing, and it will serve as a great beer for Houston’s somehow-still-present summer. Copperhead doesn’t intend to stop with these three: already, Copperhead Red was a brewery-only bottle release, and Kangaroo Killer (previously named Yellow Tail Pale) is coming soon. In addition, I’ve been told that a brewery-only bottle release for King of Terrors, a 15% imperial stout aged on coffee, cocoa nibs, and vanilla beans, is hopefully in the works. And of course, as before, Copperhead still remains one of the handful of Houston-area breweries where you can take crowlers home. I look forward to seeing more Copperhead in beer departments soon.

Braman Brewery (Running Walker)

The excitement in the beer community these days is cans, cans, cans, and Braman Brewery is jumping right into the mix with their first cans, packaged just last week, for all five of their Running Walker beers. Their IPA, Kolsch, Pilsner, Stout, and Texas Secession cans will join an increasing number of aluminum options. Braman went all out on design for these cans, enlisting the help of branding firm Hawkeye Communications. Right now the cans are being produced on a mobile canning line, with plans to eventually purchase a canning line for the brewery.

Image: Graeme Rabe

Galveston Island Brewing

It’s no secret that I love Galveston Island Brewing’s Citra Mellow. It’s a truly excellent beer, and in my opinion, easily slots into the top beers in Houston. So imagine my excitement at learning that it will join Tiki Wheat as Galveston’s first canned offerings. Both will be available in 12 ounce six-packs, at first brewery-only, but very soon to see distribution. There are also plans for the Balinese smoked imperial porter to join the cans soon. Canning is being done via Armadillo Mobile Canning, an Austin-based mobile canning solution. Cans were designed by GI’s owner, and, as shown, are quite attractive.

The post New Beer Cans and Bottles All Over Houston first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post New Beer Cans and Bottles All Over Houston appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Running Walker

Just down FM 359 from Texian Brewing in Richmond, Running Walker is laying the chips to become a major player in the Houston area craft beer scene. A few of their beers are starting to show up in accounts around town, and they have much bigger plans in the upcoming months. Fellow Houston Beer Guide writer Greg Manuel and I were invited out to the brewery to check out the progress. The brewery shares land with the Braman Wines tasting room, which had a nice crowd for a rainy Saturday afternoon. The winery and the brewery are both owned by Joe Braman, a noted figure in Texas ranching, real estate, oil, and wine. The name Running Walker is from a breed of hunting dogs Joe hunts with, one of his passions. The brewery itself is located in a large warehouse building next door to the tasting room. In front of the brewery they are working on building a large outdoor patio with both their wine and beer served, along with a stage for live music. Inside of the brewery building they are planning on a tap room, also selling their wine and beer, along with what is going to be a beautiful event space. The winery itself is located in a building behind the brewery, and down the road there are plans for a possible distillery as well. Also being discussed, is the idea of a tasting/tap room near downtown Houston serving their products. Our first steps inside of the brewery itself were quite a surprise. I’ve been in a number of breweries in my life, from large scale operations to small shops, but I hadn’t seen anything quite like this. No expense was spared, the floors were epoxied, everything was brand new, and the feeling was more of walking into a chemical clean room than the usual brewery. The German brewer, with 20 years of industry experience, preaches cleanliness and it really showed. Also notable was the amount of space they had to grow. They could easily quadruple in size in this facility and still have space. Currently they are setup on a 17 BBL system with a IDD High Efficiency Brewing System (HEBS). This system allows them to brew 4-5 different batches of beer in a single day. As general manager Tom Rey told us, their limits on brewing right now aren’t on the system but on the number of fermenters they have. They also have an 150BBL surge tank for filtering their well water supply.

Future outdoor taproom and live music stage

HEBS

Picture from the brewery looking towards the tap room, with entrance to the private event space on the left.

Tap Handle Design

Tap Handle Design

Future Private Event Space

The post Dog Will Hunt – Running Walker Brewery first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Dog Will Hunt – Running Walker Brewery appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.