This is a guest post by J. Darris Mitchell.
A Visit to Oskar Blues Brewery Austin
Location: 10420 Metric Blvd Austin, Texas 78758
Oskar Blues Brewery is a great place to take a family when you need a drink. We’ll get to the beers—how could I not?—but first I’d like to paint a picture of the perfect patio.
It starts with an outdoor bar, for those of you who prefer to make eye contact with the lovely men and women serving drinks rather than the folks you came out to meet. From there is a deck loaded with picnic tables. Shallow steps and a ramp lead down from there to an area shaded by cottonwood and filled with more picnic tables, hammocks and a few yard games. There’s tons of room for kids to run around, dig in some gravel, and just generally spend their time about as productively as the adults around them currently drinking beer. Oscar Blues is super cool about dogs too (if that’s your thing) so bring Fido and they’ll provide a water bowl for him to drink alongside master.
If older kids you have, worry not! The inside of Oskar Blues has impressive leather booths that look mostly kid proof, plus pinball machines and a (when we were there, anyway) a live band!
Editors note: they are a great live music venue with live music almost everyday of the week.
Truly this place has something for the whole family. There was an even a trailer smoking Bar-B-Q when we went.
Seriously though, this place is so good for families that when we arrived there was a kid’s birthday party happening. That’s right, balloons and cake and the whole nine yards at a brewery! As a parent, this makes me very happy!
How to celebrate you ask?
How about a beer!
Can o’ Bliss is perhaps the perfect patio beer. It’s a tropical IPA that I would describe as thirst-quenchingly juicy. There’s some fruit flavor in there for sure. I got mostly passionfruit but others at the table claimed they could taste pineapple too. This was the most popular beer with the people I talked to by far. Everyone loved it. you will too!
Guns ‘N Rose is a glass of wine in beer form. It’s sour, tart, evervescent, a little funky, and surprisingly good. Order one for that one friend of yours who likes wine and what the whining stop.
Beerito is Mexican style amber lager, and it is a very fine example of one. It has a great amber color, and is crisp and clear. With a very nice malty note, this perfectly textured beer tastes like what I always want fermentation to taste like. Definitely not the craziest thing on the menu, but a beer that would be recognized as good across the continent. Try one.
The G’knight was the one beer that I did not like. It’s an imperial IPA, and for me it was just too much of everything. It was pungent with hops, but there was no delicacy to the flavor. It tasted to me like the brewer got a great assortment of hops and just dumped them all in way too early in the boil. The bitterness stands up the heavy malty body of this one, but I don’t really mean that as a compliment. Might be good for hopheads, but it made me want to scrape my tastebuds off.
However, the Death by Coconut is, quite simply, astounding. It is extremely smooth (Not sure how they pulled this off, but damn is it impressive. I had my son with me so couldn’t really chat with the brewers, but I’d like to go back to glean some secrets). On top of this creamy luscious texture is a fantastic coconut flavor. It holds up and balances well with this porter. Drink this one before it gets too hot! Like this weekend!
Ten Fidy. Now this is a beer! I would describe the Ten Fidy as a drinking the milk from the worlds’ toughest, oldest oak stump. It’s an imperial stout with flavor to match the ABV. I tasted whiskey, espresso, and maybe some of the smokiness from the burnt bits on brisket. This is a good one to end a flight of beers with, because it knocked me on my butt!
Go There Because: you have a family and want to drink outside in this glorious springtime weather.
Don’t miss: The Can o’ Bliss. It’s as juicy as they come and just perfect for a warm spring day (or a hot summer one).
J. Darris Mitchell is a sci-fi writer from Austin, Texas. He’s drunk beers in 10 countries and on 4 continents and has been drinking fine beers in Austin longer than most of local craft breweries have existed. When not writing, he often spends his weekends brewing beer in his backyard with his darling wife, his two year old son, a fat cat, and six chickens. You can follow him on Twitter @joedarris.
