Hi there! Welcome back to our monthly recap, where in March we explored different cities, new beer releases, and awesome anniversary parties. Enjoy!
Travel by Brittany
San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas has lots of amazing beer to offer. Our favorite spot of the trip was at The Pearl where we enjoyed lots of amazing beer from Southerleigh Brewing, most notably their Margarita Gose. The brewery is located in the old San Antonio Brewers Association building and features many old Brewing machines and pictures like a brewing museum! They also offer the best brunch in town.
Freetail brewing Company and Blue Star Brewing Company offered different experiences with Freetail being a more typical brewpub with pub food and pizza, while Blue Star offered up organic beers served with cafe style delicacies. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Basic trip to San Antonio without eating amazing Mexican food and sipping a margarita or two on the Riverwalk.
Denver
Next stop on our beer travels brought us to Denver, Colorado. Some may say Denver is one of the beer capitals of the country, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Our first day in Denver, we enjoyed drinking all the special Yeti’s we could find at the Barrel Bar at Great Divide. A quick walk across the street will take you to The Source, an incredible collection of restaurants, butchers, cheese shops, florists, and above all, Crooked Stave. The mother of the sour beer exceeded all expectations, and of course we came home with quite a few bottles. We spent a week in Winter Park, Colorado, enjoying some fresh spring snow before spending our last day back in Denver.
We ate at Denver Biscuit Company, then took the quick stroll over to Cerebral Brewing.
This brewery was themed scientist to its 
core with a friendly skeleton greeting you as you walked in, beakers for flight tasting, and Petri dishes full of elements to learn about inside the community tables. They certainly have their beer science down as well.
Other stops along the way were C-Squared Ciders, Stem Ciders, and while we were in the neighborhood a quick flight at Epic: 6 Baptists Walk Into A Bar – all the Baptists! This certainly won’t be the last time we enjoy some Denver beer!
Austin Brewery Anniversaries
Circle Brewing Company
Happy 6th Anniversary to Circle Brewing! We attended the big party in style after one of our own, Brittany, won a free ticket to the festivities from our friends at Keep ATX Brewed! At the party, we got to listen to some great music and drink some great beer. One of our favorites from Circle their is Archetype IPA, an IPA brewed the way it was originally supposed to be brewed from the trade routes of the pale ale all the way from England to India. The result is certainly an award winning Ancient Ale. We also got a sneak peek at their new cans featuring the brand new logo, which can be found on shelves at local stores today. We are certainly happy Circle has been in the Austin beer scene for 6 years, and cheers to many more!
Red Horn Coffee House & Brewing Co.
Red Horn Coffee House and Brewing Co. celebrated its 2nd Anniversary this month with 
a packed weekend full of great beer!
Located in Cedar Park off Parmer Ln & 1431 this gem is a godsend to craft beer lovers in the North Austin suburbs. Fans of Red Horn were out in full force on a rainy Saturday afternoon celebrating two years and many more to come! There were 28 house beers on tap and we tried all the HapSlappy, The S.O.N and Suburban Ninja variants. Favorites were Hapslappy Ginger, The S.O.N Coconut and Suburban Ninja Bourbon Barrel Aged w/ Vanilla.
One of the highlights of the weekend was Red Horn’s first bottle release. We managed to snag a You Be Funky Sour Grand Cru and a Hippie Hollow Dry Hopped Sour and are so excited to try these!
Bottle Releases
Jester King Brewery
Colour Five
It’s that time of year again! Jester King released their third batch of Colour Five, a sour beer blended with refermented blueberries. The color of this beer is beautiful – a deep dark violet that is tart and full of blueberry flavors.
What’s great about Jester King is that their beer can be cellared for a good amount of time. Turns out, we had a 2016 Colour Five at home waiting to be paired with 2017! The 2016 was not as tart and was more smooth and mellow. If you have a chance to get your hands on this one through a trade or next year’s release, it’s well worth it!
Rare Corals
T
he last weekend of March, Jester King released Rare Corals – a farmhouse ale refermented with guava, bananas, strawberries, cantaloupe, toasted coconut, and chamomile. The strongest flavors we tasted were the guava, cantaloupe, and the chamomile. Any time there is tea in beer, we immediately gravitate towards it. This definitely had a funky taste, yet was super smooth to drink on a hot day.
We picked up a couple of bottles of Rare Corals and are hoping to drink them sooner rather than later since the season is perfect for it!
Breweries that are New to Texas
Bell’s Brewery
Bell’s is finally in Texas! This Michigan brewery debuted March 1st in Texas distributing a full line up like Two Hearted and Kalamzoo Stout. We went to The Brass Tap at The Domain to celebrate their debut where they had complementary Two Hearted glasses to take home with a purchase of a pint.
Distribution started the same week in Austin and they also brewed a special beer just for Texas – Am I Right or Amarillo. It’s really exciting to have another prominent Midwestern brewery down in Texas and we’re hoping that more and more breweries can come to Texas over time from the Midwest.
Crafts
Cozy Blue Stitch Club
Spring brought with it the Spring Dream #cozybluestitchclub pattern. The pastel tones and floral pods really got us looking forward to bluebonnet season here in Texas.
Bluebonnets are a native Texas wildflower and pop up all over fields and along the highways in the spring making for a beautiful spring time floral backdrop. Maybe next spring we’ll do a Bluebonnet embroidery pattern!
This month we played with a lot of new stitches and let our creativity take control. Can you pick out where we each did something different with the pattern? New stitches used in this pattern: stem stitch, whipped back stitch, whipped wheel stitch and split stitch.
Dog & Beer Events
Mega Mutt Monday @ Banger’s
At the end of March, Kimberly was finally able to make it out to Banger’s Sausage House 
and Beer Garden for a monthly Mega Mutt Monday! This month the event was all about pit bulls, as it was themed The Pits of Spring. Bangers joined forces with Love-a-Bull Pit Bull Rescue to raise funds for their great organization. Kimberly and Jared enjoyed a delicious dinner accompanied by a couple rounds of beers while listening to the band Steel Betty.
Sierra had the most fun though, she made friends with every dog she met and got a lot of attention from all the servers there. Love-a-Bull even set up a doggy photo booth and took flower crown pictures inspired by Sophie Gamand. Afterward Sierra visited all the doggy vendors, bought some beef flavored dog beer from YoDog Snackery, got her nails grinded by the guys from Woof Gang bakery, and chowed down on a pupcake!
Our Basics And Beer stitch club was born back in December when 
A few of us went to celebrate Oskar Blues ATX’s release of locally brewed Ten Fidy. At this event, they also tapped a PB+J Firkin that paired with an espresso cupcake from Hey Cupcake! Oskar Blues is still relatively new to Austin and we were really excited to have a glass of Ten Fidy from the source. Hope to be back in the near future for more events!
The ATX Brew Crew is a group of people who love to drink and support local craft beer. Typically we host a monthly get together to check out a brewery or local beer related event. This month we explored one of Austin’s newer breweries, St. Elmo Brewing. Located south of downtown, St. Elmo is a bright spot in a very industrial area. When walking into the brewery, you are instantly greeted by the delicious smells from Soursop, the resident food trailer. The patio is covered in plenty of picnic tables, string lights, and cornhole boards. Inside there are even more tables, a bookshelf full of community board games, and of course their beautiful bar.
Bringing in a new year also brought us a new brewery on the East Sixth – Lazarus Brewing. The brewery was a dream of Pastor Christian Cryder who wanted to focus on creating a space where people could hang throughout the day and even multiple times a week. Because of this, they aren’t too concerned about distribution.
At the end of January, Kimberly brought Sierra down to Independence Brewery for Barkhappy’s Barks ‘n Brews event benefitting Austin Pets Alive. If there’s one thing to know, us basics love our dogs and this event was even better because there was beer involved.
Kettle Sour Sunday at Hops and Grain was an awesome special. They took their dry hopped kettle sour and used it as a base for 4 other variants – strawberry, blackberry, apricot, and cherry. The strawberry was so fruity and fresh, we went back for more!
Basics and Beer 