Texas brew review: Up-and-coming brewers burnish reputations at beer festival

Winning a medal at the Great American Beer Festival is a big deal for any brewery. For a well-established brewery like Fort Worth’s Rahr & Sons, that’s no different. The brewery will celebrate its two gold medals with special glassware for its Oct. 17 tour and has piled on social media buzz for the awards.

Although this is a great promotional opportunity and has certainly caused more than a few high-five festivals at the brewery, it doesn’t necessarily help catapult such an established brewery to another level. Rahr is kind of already there.

However, for the up-and-comers, earning a medal at GABF is a huge boon to their reputations and can help spike sales of the winning beers.

Sherman’s 903 Brewers won a silver for its imperial stout Sasquatch and owner and founder Jeremy Roberts couldn’t have been happier after the awards ceremony. Panther Island won a silver medal for Allergeez and its brewers are firmly planted on cloud nine.

Bragging rights and pride are one thing, but turning an award into sales becomes the immediate goal after the wash of victory fades.

In that light, timing could not have been better for Rabbit Hole Brewing in Justin. Having ordered cans for its 10/6 English-style pale ale and Rapture brown ale, the Rabbit Hole team anticipated canning both upon returning from Denver.

Little did they know they’d be canning Rapture as a GABF silver medal winner as soon as they got back.

With cans launching this week across the Metroplex, Rabbit Hole will surely see a boost in sales from winning a medal at one of the most prestigious festivals in the world.

Rapture is labeled as a fusion of English and American brown ales, but its American-style tendencies are certainly more dominant. To quickly summarize without getting too nerdy, American brown ales are similar to English brown ales except that they feature more hops (surprise, surprise).

So it would stand to reason that those more dominant elements would push Rapture toward the American style, which is precisely why Rabbit Hole entered it in that category. That turned out to be a shrewd move, and now they have the hardware to prove it.

Look for Rapture and 10/6 in six-packs of 12-ounce cans all over DFW.

Quick sips

BeerFeast: Fort Worth Flying Saucer is holding its 10th Annual BeerFeast from 2 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Featuring more than 50 breweries with more than 80 beers — many of which are hard to come by — this is one of Fort Worth’s best annual events. Tickets are $35, $45 at the door; VIP is sold out. saucerbeerfeast.com.

Karbach cans: Houston veterans Karbach Brewing finally launched several months ago on draft only across the DFW area. This week, cans also arrived on store shelves with Karbach staples like Rodeo Clown double IPA and the GABF-award-winning Karbachtoberfest.

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 10:13 AM with the headline "Texas brew review: Up-and-coming brewers burnish reputations at beer festival."