St. Arnold Visit

I took a group of guys to the St. Arnold new brewery, the newery, in Houston a few weeks ago. We went on a Saturday afternoon, took the tour and drank a few good beers. The new tasting room was pretty packed for our visit and our tour group was pretty decently sized as well. Well, the tour looked like it was a pretty good size to me, but the gentleman giving the tour said it was the smallest of the day. There were probably 50 of us on the tour which also turned out to be the last one given that day. The gentleman giving the tour was in charge of sales for St. Arnold, but had been involved in the bottling lines, been an assistant brewer and the head brewer over the years. It was a very good tour that we all enjoyed. We got to see the main kettle room and head down to the main fermentation area. We didn't see the bottling line, because it was getting ready to be fired up. It seems St. Arnold recently switched to the local Anheuser Busch distributor and now they are having trouble keeping up with demand. All in all a very fun afternoon.

As far as which beers we tried, they had the Elissa IPA, Amber, Brown and Texas Wheat available. The Amber I believe is there biggest seller and is a nice drinking beer. I also like the Elissa IPA, although I am tending to like the even hoppier beers these days. It is St. Arnold's most hoppy beer, but it is not an overly hoppy beer when compared to some others. The Texas Wheat is also a very good, easy drinking beer. It was actually my favorite beer that day.