Shannon Beer of Keller, Texas

The Shannon Brewing Company’s local representative, Sam McClelland, was at the Guadalupe store of Wheatsville Co-op here in Austin last Friday.  I met him as I stopped in to get food for the long drive home down Lamar Avenue. (I had other shopping to do that took me off route. And Austin City Limits Live was enjoying their second weekend this year; so, traffic was worse than usual.) A couple of sips of good beer helped, also.

  

 Shannon Brewing Company is two years old.  Sam said that they have been popular in Dallas and are now branching out across Texas.  I think that they will do well. When I moved here in 2o11, I was not impressed with the beers.  The Prohibition Wars were fought in Chicago, not Houston, for a reason. In the five years since, I have found quite a few worthy brews and Shannon is one of the best. 

I tasted their Irish Red and Honey Porter.  The Red was flavorful, not hoppy, with a light grainy aftertaste.  The Honey Porter was surprisingly light and also not cloying the way other honey brews can be. 

On their website, they say:

Lets face it, beer is mostly water so brewing with the purest, best-tasting water we can find is a pretty good starting point. Shannon Brewing Company shares 20 acres of land with Samantha Springs, a natural source of exceptional drinking water. We secured the rights to brew our beer with pure Samantha Springs water — straight from the spring, through our filtering system, right into our brewing tanks — no chlorine, fluoride or any other treatments…just pure spring water.

At Shannon Brewing, we prefer two-row barley — the plumper, sweeter and usually more expensive version, which brings a full-bodied sweetness to the beer. It also provides a larger and stronger husk that is imperative to our natural filtration methodology. We will never compromise great flavor to save a few dollars. --http://shannonbrewing.com/ingredients/

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Saving the World Through Beer 

Awesome Austin Foods at the Wheatsville Co-op

Politics and the Inverse-Square Law

Money is Speech

BSides Austin 2016
Hurricane Tejas

Saving the World Through Beer

Save the World Brewing Co. of Marble Falls, Texas, is “America’s first 100% philanthropic production craft brewery.”  They just extended their service to humanity from their tap room to the bottled retail markets.  They create about a dozen different brews. I tasted three at my neighborhood Whole Foods and bought a six pack.

Save the World Brewing Company is the mission of former physicians Quynh and Dave Rathkamp. Their volunteer work overseas distanced them from “the first world problems” of most of the people they saw in their pediatric practices. They found themselves called by God to follow a different path.  (Full story here.)

Their sales representative, Cory, was at Whole Foods. I recommended that he visit the Wheatsville Co-op; and he told me that he had just come from there, and they now have it on the shelf. 

Cory brought Agnes Dei, Lux Mundi, and Humilus Filus.  I purchased the third.  It was a hard choice because all of them were superb. I have never thought much of Texas beers.  (See here and here. ) These were heavenly. They are full-flavored with overtones. The Lux Mundi was light, of course, yet tasteful and pleasing. I chose the warm and toasty Humilus Filius, both for culinary and philosophical reasons. My previous favorite had been Arrogant Bastard, but now I am converted. 

(I wrote this last night. I went to post it this morning, and, of course, it was labeled "Draft.")

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

(These are some of the two dozen articles about locally produced retail foods.)

Sunday at the Co-op 

Hot Dang Vegie Burger Mix 

Salsa Showdown: Jaime’s versus Royitos 

Mayan Mojo 

Drippin' Sauce

Epic Meat Bars