A Meditation on Beer and Texas
by C. C. Hansen
Today’s blog post title comes from a short poem by the 13th century Sufi poet known as Rumi. The poem’s next line reads, “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” (From Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing, translated by Coleman Barks.) Both lines describe Jester King’s approach to making beer.
Jester King is a brewery, pizzeria, and goat farm on a beautiful ranch in the Texas Hill Country on the outskirts of Austin. We make food & drink tied to a time, place & people and are a welcoming place for people of all ages to enjoy community, fun & hospitality in a special setting.
Jester King Brewing Home Page
But, Jester King isn’t the only brewery that makes the Hill Country its home. In today’s post, I’ll focus primarily on a recent visit to Jester King, but I’ll also introduce a couple of other worthy brews from the region that I had the good fortune to sample.
But first, some thoughts about Texas.
Texas Terroir
The Texas I learn about from current news reports is very different from the Texas I know from friends and relatives who at one time or another have made it home. Ken, one of my early creative collaborators (in SoCal, then New York), moved to Texas to become artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center. A gifted chef I knew in New York, David, was born in Houston. Roberto, an extraordinary Filipino-American chef/graphic designer I had the good fortune to work with here in So Cal, was raised in San Antonio.
My daughter the Elusive Isabella performed in several videos — love letters to Los Angeles, actually — produced by the husband and wife team behind BreatHHelmet who are both Dallas natives (Tip: “LA Fish Flow” A rap from Guy Man and “EyEris BoUche for women” are classics from this series). In my day job as a writing professor at the University of Southern California, I’ve gotten to know and love tons of students who hail from Texas, many of whose parents have roots in all kinds of distant shores of this world.
I first visited Texas when my daughter, Francesca, was looking at colleges. We had a lot of fun and a lot of good BBQ on that trip. Though she ultimately got her degree from UCLA, she and her husband bought their first house in Dripping Springs, TX a few years ago and have put down strong roots in the area, with a thriving kitchen garden and menagerie that includes a dozen chickens, a couple of dogs, and “two cats in the yard.”
The point is, all these associations inform my appreciation and enjoyment of the beer that I sample when I visit, which I recently did again over the holidays.
Jester King Brewing
While visiting Francesca and her family for the holidays, we invited our good friends Mike and Nina to join us at Jester King for some fellowship and beverage. Mike and Nina are So Cal natives who joined the most recent exodus of Californians to Texas. Interestingly, Mike and Nina are wine people. Beer isn’t their thing. Luckily, Jester King includes wine and cider on their menu, making our ex-pat friends happy campers.
Spontaneously Fermented Beer
Jester King is known for its sour beer creations. I wrote about Sour Beer in general on a previous post. Today I’m going to go a little deeper into the process that Jester King uses. On their “SPON Beers” page, the brewers explain that, “Spontaneous Fermentations [are] 100% spontaneously fermented beer inspired by authentic Belgian Lambic & Gueuze. We chill the unfermented beer overnight in our coolship and allow native yeast to work its magic. A true reflection of Texas terroir.”
“Coolship”? According to the Brews Brothers at CraftBeer.com,
What’s old is new. Coolships (koelschips in Flemish), dating back for centuries, are appearing in a growing number of craft breweries in what may be a mini-coolship fever, propelled by the explosion of interest in Belgian brewing styles and a harkening back to traditional brewing.
Brews Brothers, CraftBeer.com
If you’re interested in learning more about coolships and this brewing tradition, I encourage you to read the entire article. I’ll just add that the authors describe coolships as “giant brownie baking pans.” “Yeasts are naturally everywhere,” the Brews Brothers tell us. “It was not until 1857 and the work of French scientist Louis Pasteur, that the fermentation process was understood. He discovered the key role of yeast as the micro-organism responsible for alcoholic fermentation.
“Brewers learned that local yeasts settle on the wort after it cooled,” the Brothers continue, “devouring the sugars and assiduously multiplying…. This process is known as ‘spontaneous fermentation’ because there is no infusion of modern laboratory-created yeasts. These local yeasts provide terroir, a sense of place.”
So, What Did We Drink?
On this particular visit, only the Elusive Isabella and I were drinking beer, and each of us ordered two brews. We traded tastes and joined our large group in consuming mountains of Jester Kings’ extraordinary pizza selections.
A word of to the wise: brewers are masters of yeast. Pizza dough involves yeast. If a brewery makes its own wood fired pizza, jump on it!
The “Loncito” (béchamel, mushrooms, sausage, gruyere, garlic, parsley, chives, tarragon) and “Pyrus” (sage oil, Swiss, gorgonzola, spiced pear, and bacon) went particularly well with the SPON beers we ordered.
BBA Moderne Dansk
This 6.7% ABV brew was aged in Balcones Bourbon barrels, then refermented with Danish Stevnsbær cherry juice from Frederiksdal Kirsebærvin in Denmark. My paternal grandfather was born in Denmark, and that’s a part of her ethnicity that the Elusive Isabella is particularly fond of.
Flavor? Wild, sweet, sour, complex. Thoroughly enjoyable. Thought: would make a great reduction for a Cantonese-style pork dish prepared in a wok…
Staked Plains Pils
Crisp, refreshing (what other words are there to describe a well-made pils?) with a hint of prairie and sunshine, this lager is brewed with 100% Texas malt from the Llano Estacado (image of said llano, below, courtesy of Wikimedia).
13th Anniversary SPON
Special blend of 1 year, 2 year, and 4 year spontaneous ales
You know how they say you see your life flash before your eyes when you’re close to death? Tasting this 13th Anniversary SPON allowed me to experience the history of this brewery in the blink of a … tastebud? Well, with our first, second, and third taste, we got a rush of impressions, encompassing variations of sunshine, rainfall, soil quality, amber waves of grain, and trellises of fragrant hops, spanning the years under all kinds of conditions.
Initial impressions were quickly followed by a bouquet of subtle essences from all the oak barrels in which all the spontaneous ales were fermented. I flashed on the hands of the farmers and brewers and distillers, vintners, and coopers who had labored to fashion this celebration of 13 years in business, 13 years in place, soaking in all the genii loci — transient and permanent beings co-habitating the spaces in which this sublime pour came into being.
JK Hazy
Hopped with Galaxy, Sabro, and Strata.
- Galaxy for passionfruit, peach, and citrus.
- Sabro for tangerine and coconut, with hints of cedar and mint cream.
- Strata for strawberries, and melon, morphing into red grapefruit and cannabis with a hint of chili pepper.
Yeah, this one was good — solid and satisfying, telegraphing the message that, these people know what they’re doing.
What Else?
We cannot end this post without mentioning just a couple more worthy and crushable local selections that tickled our palates in Texas.
Alright, alright, alright
Daughter Francesca, who doesn’t drink, was drawn to this can and this beer name when she was shopping at H.E.B. in anticipation of her parents’ holiday visit. The beer was good. Did it have anything to do with the actor Matthew McConaughey, whose breakout role was in the 1993 movie Dazed and Confused? Probably just the way the name combines the actor and the movie. And the fact that McConaughey is a Uvalde, Texas native and a proud alumnus of the University of Texas, Austin. Beyond that, the internet wouldn’t say. If you hear different, let me know.
McConauhaze is brewed in Dripping Springs, Texas by Twisted X Brewing Company, which was founded in 2009. One of the reviewers on BeerAdvocate.com described my experience with a six-pack of McConaughaze (over a nine-day span!) perfectly:
it’s nice, it’s easy, it can cast a wide net and cover quite a few of the galaxy and citra notes but it’s all somewhat muted or kept low key. I believe that to all be intentional, however. ultimately, it’s an easy IPA that flirts with NEIPA tendencies without fully committing.
imnodoctorbut from Texas
Last But Not Least
Our SoCal transplant friends Mike and Nina invited us up their neck of the Austin area — Georgetown — on Boxing Day for a fantastic late lunch at a place called Goodfolks. Good food, good cocktails, and some interesting and decent beer. Because I’m all about local, I couldn’t help but order a pour of River Bend Raspberry Sour brewed by Barking Armadillo Brewing of Georgetown. It was just as good (to me) as the sours I tasted at Jester King, which led me to believe that they’ve got some kind of special “Sour Juju” going on in the greater Austin area.
Where’s the most interesting and/or scenic place that you’ve enjoyed a memorable independently-brewed craft beer? Let us know! We’re always looking for the unique and iconic. It’s just our nature.
Cheers!
— Chauncey B, the So Cal Craft Beer Blogger
Instagram and Threads: @socalcraftbeer
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Featured photo at the top of this post by C.C. Hansen. “Jester King Landscape After a Storm”
