Road Trip – Big Bend Brewing Company

The most remote brewery in the United States is located in Texas. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit twice now and the change between my first visit 20 months ago to now is dramatic.

Steve Anderson, the late brewmaster and co-founder of Big Bend Brewing, was kind enough to sit and chat with us during that first visit and told us of his lofty goals for the brewery. His death last November certainly left the team in a state of mourning, but I think it actually helped motivate everybody to help make that dream a reality. When you look at Big Bend Brewing now, you see a brewery that has grown from a regional distribution brewery to a statewide (and growing), well-known brewery. With the Houston market as a target for distribution this coming spring, that will allow them to cover all of the major markets in Texas. But enough about their distribution goals, let’s talk about our visit this weekend.

If you’ve ever had any of Big Bend’s beers (especially Tejas Lager or Big Bend Hefeweizen), you can literally taste the influence that Steve’s history at Live Oak Brewing in Austin has on the beer. The hefeweizen is the one beer that I put side-by-side with Live Oak Hefeweizen (my single favorite daily drinker) and can say there is little difference between the two, which is a definite compliment to Big Bend. Plus, since my last visit, they have expanded the Tejas Lager line to three total beers: the original Tejas Lager, the light and refreshing Tejas Clara, and the beer to hopefully steal the market share on Negra Modelo, Tejas Negra. Each of these lagers have qualities that should make even the non-craft beer drinker pleased.

Since my last visit, one of the major changes I noticed this time around was the barrel-aging program that Big Bend has embarked upon. Some of the brews that were still fermenting were a saison aging in a Sauvignon Blanc barrel and a Russian Imperial Stout that was aging in Scotch barrels. Fortunately, the barrel-aged beer that was on tap was the Marfa Light with vanilla Russian Imperial Stout. At 11.2% ABV, this beast was so delicious that I couldn’t help but have it twice. The vanilla flavor smoothed out the heaviness of the stout.

I was also lucky enough to catch two of their seasonals in the taproom. The outgoing Oktoberfest was finishing up as the fall season winds down, while the Blue Norther winter seasonal was recently tapped. The dry-hopped imperial red was one of our favorite varieties that we had. The hoppiness of the beer was tremendous and the caramel malt flavor was very pleasurable, especially with cooler temperatures outside.

One of the things you’ll notice when you make the trip out to the brewery is the friendliness of the people as everybody is interested from where each made the drive. For example, we met people from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Midland, and even as far as Connecticut. What interested us the most about everybody was the reason that brought people out to remote West Texas. Most everybody is there to visit Big Bend National Park, but quite a few (like us) were there also scoping out land to purchase for their retirement. In fact, what leads people to the area is always something different. One of the staff members we spent a good amount of time chatting with was their Packaging Manager. He originally grew up in Corpus Christi and lives in Marathon (about 30 minutes east of Alpine) now. He told us of the affordability of the area and the fact that even though there are long days from time to time, it’s a great job. In fact, his suggestion of taking Highway 90 to return home was one of the best suggestions we got the entire trip as it was beyond beautiful and allowed us to see a large portion of Texas we otherwise would have ignored.

If you can make the trip out west, you have to stop at Big Bend Brewing for the beer, the people, and the scenery. There is truly nowhere like it. The “Beer From Out Here” is truly great and should be on your radar anytime you order one at your favorite bar.