Our racers and rockcrawlers have the best sponsors!  Not only do they keep them in parts, and funds to travel, but sometimes, they add to the party too!  Pedernales Brewing Company supplies one of racers with beer, now that is a good sponsor.  Each of the Central Series races, Carl regularly comes with a keg of beer, or two to share with the rest of the racers.  We have had dark and light, ale and Hefe, all of it delicious.

When we were in Fredericksburg, Carl arranged a tour of the brewery.  Technically, they are a micro-brew.  In 2012, open only for 8 months, they produced 750,000 cases of beer.  In 2013, they are set to exceed that amount.  Last year they were ranked #14 for microbrews in Texas in production, this year, they will exceed that amount, growing to the #2 or #3 producer.

We were lucky and the owner, Lee Hereford, gave us the tour.  Lee and his brewmeister have put together an impressive operation.  They brew to the German standard, which means only four ingredients can be in the beer:  water, hops, barley and yeast.  That’s it, just four, only when they brew Hefeweisen to they add an additional ingredient in wheat.  Now you would think that with just four ingredients, all beer would taste the same, not true, not true.  Their beers are as individual as any you will find, and I think it’s because they do something pretty special.

Each beer is made from an old recipe, some from the 1800’s, some from the 1900’s.  Each of them comes from a specific location, so to be able to match that beer and that location, one of the four ingredients must be changed to match.  That’s the water.  Pedernales filters their Fredericksburg water to its’ purest possible state, then through research on the part of the brewmeister, the water minerals and salts are added back to match the water that would have originally been in the beer.  One example is a recipe they use from St. Louis in 1910.  The water is brewed, just as the beer would be to match the water that you would have drank in 1910 right from the tap in St. Louis.  I believe that is what makes their beer unique, attention to detail.

So, when you are hanging in Texas, stop by and ask for a Lobo…it will come from the Pedernales Brewing Company and I guarantee it will be great.  Enjoy it and bottoms up…for the rest of you, watch for them, they are growing by leaps and bounds.