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Salt & Time Combines Thirsty Planet brews with a Sausage & Mustard of the Month

admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:58:35 +0000

Salt & Time Announces Craft Beer Link of the Month Featuring Texas’ Best Craft Breweries

Austin’s local food community is in the midst of explosive growth, with artisan butchers and craft brewers helping lead the way. Salt & Time is celebrating this by partnering with Texas’ best craft brewers to make a Craft Beer Link of the Month. Starting in March, each month Salt & Time will feature a local brewery’s beer as a featured ingredient in a sausage and an accompanying mustard. Austinites will be able to get these sausages hot off the grill or packed up to take home at the HOPE Farmers Market (414 Waller St, from 11 to 3 on Sundays). as well as at special events at the breweries. The first six breweries to be featured are Real Ale, Live Oak, Jester King, Hops & Grain, Southern Star and Thirsty Planet.

On Satuday, March 5th from 11-2, Salt & Time will bring our grill to Thirsty Planet Brewery (11160 Circle Drive, Austin, Texas 78736) to kick off this most excellent pairing of beer and sausage. We will feature their Buckethead IPA in our sausage and Thirsty Goat Amber Ale in our mustard throughout the Month of March.

The schedule of upcoming breweries and events will be announced at www.saltandtime.com in the coming weeks.

Thirsty Planet Brewing / Beer Town Austin

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:57:36 +0000

Thirsty Planet Grand Opening 2 Cheers!Posted by Chris Troutman on 8/25/10 • Categorized as Features We were invited out to Thirsty Planet‘s open house back in July (Yikes- this post is tardy. Between Hawaii, babies, jobs, lack of iMovie 08 skillz, and general etcetera-ness we are behind on our video posts) and here is the rundown. Mr. Smittle had all three of his beers flowing. This was my first time to try the amber and wheat. Pretty good. The amber was solid and the wheat a classic American what that was refreshing and super drinkable- and with the heat, I did drink more of the wheat. And of course I had some of the IPA. There were early reports of it suffering from low carbonation, but it was in grand form for the occasion. Brian goes into more detail about the beers in the video (I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to type it out when you can just as easily click ‘play’…).........

Austin American Statesman July 13, 2010

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:28:31 +0000

Hop to it: Bucket Head IPA is here Thirsty Planet's debut is big, bold and full of promise for upstart Austin brewery Patrick Beach AMERICAN-STATESMAN Enlarge Photo Tammy and Brian Smittle, owners of Thirsty Planet, have wheat and amber brews on the way. The latest from Austin360.com Zach Theatre presents 'Metamorphoses' with a swimming pool and splash zone .After 30 years, Austin gallery owner Wally Workman says it's time to celebrate A.J. Castillo crafts a new 'Austin sound' Mulberry: The wine bar that roared Bars that help beat the heat .Latest AP Entertainment Headlines » Eating champ out of hot water over July 4th arrest .Piano tuner brings harmony to Newport jazz fest Lythgoe returning as executive producer of 'Idol' Salahi's scrap at 'View' dominates 'Today' show Kyra Sedgwick, Bryan Cranston celebrate Emmy nods .By Patrick Beach AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Published: 1:34 p.m. Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Post a Comment E-mail Print ShareLarger Type Small Type Tammy and Brian Smittle of Thirsty Planet Brewing Co. had a boy this spring, and now they've got a bouncing baby beer: Bucket Head India Pale Ale, the new brewery's first offering. Sometimes a married couple gets really busy. If this is a statement of purpose, Austin-area beer lovers have reason to be encouraged. Brian promised his IPA would be a fairly big beer and it is: about 7.25 percent alcohol with 70 International Bittering Units. That's 10 more IBUs than a Dogfish Head 60. For comparison, most of your American mass-market lagers have about 5 to 10 IBUs. That's why they don't taste like, um, anything at all. I had my first Bucket Head the other day at the Flying Saucer for, you know, work. There wasn't much of a head on the pour (Brian says he's still waiting on a carbonation tester, and subsequent batches will be more carbonated) but the color was an alluring amber, the nose citrus-y tart. Coniferous hops dominate within, but there's enough of a malt backbone that it doesn't feel out of whack and the Cascade and Amarillo hops at the end invite you back for another sip. Still, if you're like me and your palate has been effectively napalmed by Stone Ruination and the like, this one might strike you as a sessionable IPA. That first 10-barrel batch, which as of this writing was available at the Saucer, Houndstooth Coffee, Black Sheep Lodge and the Draught House, is to be followed by a full 30-barrel batch Brian brewed a couple of weeks ago, which has "literally a ton plus 400 pounds of grain." He also reports it's a messy recipe, with a 90-minute boil, more time grinding the grain, getting it in and out of the tank, cleaning and the like. At the end, the wort — the liquid that will become beer once the sugars ferment — is run through a hopback, a sealed thingy loaded with hops. The thinking behind using a hopback is that you don't lose any of the aromatic complexity as you would in a boil. There are five different hops in this IPA: Magnum, Columbus, Simcoe and the aforementioned Amarillo and Cascade. "It's a tough batch to brew, but it's worth it," Brian says. The hopheads at Beer Advocate would seem to agree. The two reviewers who'd posted their thoughts by the middle of last week gave it an A+ and a B+. If the IPA is too stern a style for you, the brewery, just off U.S. 290 West, has a wheat and an amber on the way. But with Bucket Head, Thirsty Planet is letting all the other Austin upstarts know they're not fooling around.

Thirsty Planet thrilled to be on Thrillest!

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:14:45 +0000

The key to happiness is getting paid to do what you love -- which is tough unless what you love to do is get paid. Nick Cage is a genius. Loving drinking beer, and ready to get paid for it, Thirsty Planet Brewing Company. Thirsty was co-founded by a guy who loves suds so much, he actually volunteered in breweries while ski-bumming in Vail; together with a former Hawaiian dive-shop owner, he's just launched a 10,000sqft West Austin facility and tasting room that'll churn out 100 kegs a week, capacity described by pretty much every fraternity as "just enough to get us through Tuesday!", because college is awesome. The liquid gold comes in three forms: the seriously hoppy Buckethead IPA, whose initial sweetness is followed with a bite of bitter, the light-bodied Yellow Armadillo (50/50 malted barley and red hard winter wheat), and the sweet, malty Thirsty Goat Amber, part of whose proceeds'll go to charities -- so when urging friends to drink faster, just yell "Help! Help! Help!". So far, the goods are available in tap-dens like Draughthouse and Flying Saucer, dives from Nasty's to Black Sheep Lodge, restos including Red's Porch and Jack Allen's Kitchen, and even Houndstooth Coffee -- a tacit admission that caffeine buzzes kind of suck. The brewery's so new that fire marshals haven't even had a chance to wet their whistles, but they should be open for tours and tastes in the coming weeks. Until then check out the video above for a quick walk-through -- after which, you will emerge Knowing. But not paid. Learn more about the ATX's newest brews at thirstyplanet.net

Thirsty Planet in the Austin Chronicle!

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:02:19 +0000

Thirsty Planet Brewing Co.
11160 Circle, www.thirstyplanet.net

Hopes were high that you’d be able to read this article with a glass of Yellow Armadillo or Thirsty Goat in your hand. Alas, Thirsty Planet wasn’t quite ready to send its brews to bars at press time, but start asking for them next week.

That puts Brian Smittle and wife Tammy at the front of the line for Austin’s new brewers, completing a two-decade journey. After he received a business administration degree from William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo., “the job market wasn’t very good, so I decided to go be a ski bum in Vail, Colorado,” says Smittle. Within a couple of days, he attended a beer festival and got an invitation to watch a local brewer work. “He was mixing up 300 gallons of beer, and I said, ‘Are you getting paid for this?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I usually ski in the morning and brew beer at night.’ And I thought: ‘Wow, that could be the best sentence I’ve ever heard. It’s a scam, and I want in on it.’” Within a few years, he was also getting paid to do it, including stints at Oklahoma brewpubs.

Now that you’ve returned from the bar, enjoy your Yellow Armadillo – it’s an American-style wheat, with 50% wheat and 50% barley, and Smittle promises it will be refreshing and citrusy. Or if you got the Thirsty Goat, expect an amber with “a spicy bitterness, but nothing too heavy.” And eventually, the more adventurous among you can try Bucket Head IPA, which should be out soon. “It’s a big-alcohol beer,” says Smittle. “It’s not a double IPA, but you can see it from there. It won’t quite pull the enamel off your teeth, but it will get you where you want to go. It’s not for everyone and doesn’t try to be.”

Thirsty Planet Interview with USA Beer Trends

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:30:24 +0000

Check out the interview Brian did with Larry McIntosh of USA Beer Trends.

http://www.usabeertrends.com/?p=869

Thirsty Planet Brewing Company has let the cat out of the bag!

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:40:27 +0000

This is insane but in such a good way. New micros and craft breweries are springing up in these here parts like mushrooms after a week’s rain.

But there’s one that’s succeeded in keeping a low profile for quite awhile: Thirsty Planet Brewing, owned by Oklahoma transplants Brian and Tammy Smittle. They’ve done such a good job of keeping things quiet that they’re maybe three weeks away from brewing their first batches, with getting beer out the door in maybe six. Expect a draft-only operation for the first 60-90 days, with bottles to follow. The first beers to roll out with be Yellow Armadillo Wheat, Buckethead IPA and Thirsty Goat Amber.

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