Welcome welcome to our 28th episode of Over a Pint. This is a special one as it marks the one person, outside of myself, to be in the most Over a Pints ever- Mr. Rob Landerman! You can check out more hot Rob OAP action here and here.
This old Over a Pint pro made himself comfortable in front of the camera (enough to lick spilt beer off my arm) and along wt distiller TJ Miller, spilled the Ranger Creek brewing/distilling beans wt us. Rob, TJ, Denis Rylander, and Mark McDavid had us out to the brewery/distillery to have a look around and taste some yummy beers.
Remember, we're a beer blog, so don't hate if I get any whisky info wrong or sound dumb (that whole wt an 'e' or wt out an 'e' always fools me)...
Here're the meat and potatoes:
Rob, TJ, Denis, and Mark all met via their homebrew club
Total investment just under a million
Double distillation
TX corn used for the whisky
Experimenting wt TX climate for barrel aging- maybe only 2-3 yrs for aging
Start wt small barrels then get bigger
Experimenting wt front end spirit recipes; distilling beer recipes
Looking to be as crafty in spirits as they are in beers
End of July the Hungarian builders installed the equipment
Three beer fermenters; one whiskey. Two lagering tanks
August 1 launch wt early mid September in glasses (as of our June visit...)
Keg bottle out of the gate. All four beers. San Antonio only for now
Hope to be in atx in Jan/feb
Been shopping around test batches to bars to great success
Looking to put bottles in small mom pop shops first
First seasonal spring 2011 TX wildflower wit, tentatively
All brand new equipment by Bavarian holstien. Out of CA
Looking to use lots of local ingredients with out sacrificing style quality
All beer unfiltered
Eight months before beer barrel aging on premise.
Will be one of the few brewery/distilleries to age their own beer in own barrels
Planning on a bourbon aged lager
Souring barrels, too
Turn some beer recipes into whisky to age beer in it's own barrel
Plan on making oak spirals out of TX oak if they can't get TX oak made barrels
The beers:
South TX lager.
Traditional dirtmunder lager
All German ingredients to brew to style. 5.2 abv
Very balanced. Great mouth feel. Shooting for a gateway beer. First introductory beer in portfolio.
Oatmeal Pale Ale OPA
Less traditional more unique.
Shooting for Sierra Nevada pale bench mark. 17% oats fir body and mouth feel. Only 3 malts 2 hops. Amarillo centenial hops.
Smooth drinkable 5%abv sessionsble.
Misquite smoked porter. "The Smoking Gun"
In house smoked malt.
45% smoked malt.
Great smoke front good roasty chocolate malt then subtle smoke flavor. Very nice.
"like chocolate covered bacon"
"La bestia Emabala" strong Belgian.
Used wt local honey.
No rock candy only sugar. 7% abv then 8.5% on second wt rock candy.
Still in test phase.
Has potential. First batch dry but not Belgian depth.
We had a great time out there wt the Ranger Creek gents. This guy tagged along and posted some stuff two.
The Smoking Gun misquite smoked porter was my favorite 9Rob described it as chocolate covered bacon and I can't disagree), but the none of the beers were anything to scoff at. I look forward to trying the whisky when they begin distilling. Thy mentioned they may produce a "top shelf" moonshine too. Nice.
We're drinking various Ranger Creek beers in the video; I think I'm finishing off a combination of mine and someone else's strong Belgian then move onto the smoked porter. Or maybe the smoked porter is what Rob spills/licks off my arm. Either way they were all tasty. I'm really looking forward to these beers and hope they get in ATX sooner than later.
So if you can, crack open a beer and join us over a pint.
Enjoy!
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