Rolling Out the Barrel

It didn’t last long, and the brewpubs all vanished by 2000. Only the Ginger Man, which opened in 1985, made it as a haven for beer drinkers, which it remains to this day. There were many reasons why the nascent brewpub industry fell from favor so quickly. The Village suffered from too much competition for too few consumers while the Richmond strip, the stretch between Sage and Hillcroft, slipped from grace as people found other places to party.

Around the same time, microbreweries started to emerge. The oldest microbrewery in town is St. Arnold’s, which started in 1994. Their Summer Pils is a very light and refreshing pilsner with a sweet malt taste complemented by a nice hoppy aroma and only a hint of bitterness. It is light gold in color and wonderfully effervescent. It won its first Gold Medal in a beer tasting in 1997, the year the beer was launched. St. Arnold’s as microbrewery as long since been followed by many new microbreweries across town, each producing seasonal beers like summer ale.

In order to understand the origin of seasonal ales, we have to go back to the 1700s, to a place called Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, and specifically to the province of Hainault. Here they brew top-fermented beers known as saisons, meaning seasons. In fact, many of the beers brewed here have the word saison in their name. Top fermentation means that the ale undergoes a secondary fermentation in the cask with the yeast rising to the top of the barrel, where it does its magic.

Before the introduction of refrigeration, beer was generally made in the cool winter months, with the last of the brewing done around March or April, since it was too hot to brew in the summer because the beer would most likely spoil from airborne bacteria. Beer made in March, known as la saison de mars, was stored in cool caves (lagered) and consumed over the summer. In the winter, brewers made Winter or Christmas ales that were dark, full-bodied and with lots of hops and flavor to make us feel warm and full. The color of the beer brewed also followed the seasons with summer represented by a light, goldencolored ale, autumn with its amber-colored ales and winter with a dark brown stout or black porter.

Today in Houston, we have imports from almost every country that brews a beer plus a dozen or so microbreweries and countless pubs and bars that have hundreds of different beers on tap. Thanks to the new Whole Foods on Post Oak, we even have a supermarket with a brewery inside. We have a well-established beer culture and one that can only continue to move in the direction of good-tasting beer.