Made in the shade for 10 years

photo / Aaron Stanush 

I get in my car and drive with the top down, despite the gray, misty dawn, to Fifth Street. I head east, way east, past the newly gentrified part of the city, past the warehouses and studios, past the bus station. And on my right, there it is: Live Oak Brewing Company. My two associates, with a camera and recording equipment, are already there when I arrive. We all say our hellos. None of us has slept very much. On the outside, the building is unassuming, but the barrels of spent grain out front and the faint smell of yeast let us know we’re in the right place.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

Brian Peters and Chip McElroy had been homebrewing for years before they decided they wanted to start a brewery. That was nearly a decade ago.

“It was about as easy as falling off a log,” Chip explains with an ironic smile. “We just said, let’s get some tanks and put them together and it’ll be easy.”

Chip and Brian soon found that their experience as homebrewers did not translate as readily as they’d first thought. In fact, they were doing something else entirely.

“We had no idea how difficult it was going to be, but that lack of experience was the best thing because when you lack experience, you’re stupid and you don’t know a thing can’t be done. And as you blunder ahead, things eventually do get done,” says Chip.

Chip and Brian had been talking to various bars, pitching their company, and businesses seemed receptive. So the next obstacle became delivering the beer. They were reluctant to get involved with a beer distributor, starting off. In a similar headstrong fashion the two decided they’d not only brew the beer but they’d deliver it as well.

“If we can make the beer, then we can deliver it, too, we thought. Little did we realize that the beer distribution part was like a business in itself. Getting that done is completely different than making beer. So it was like we’d started two businesses in one. I mean, we were the two main brewers, keg washers, and deliverers. Very hard work, but we loved it.”

On their first day, they had seven accounts. After a month, they had twenty accounts. And after a decade, Live Oak has spread from Austin to Dallas, Houston, Alpine, Marathon, San Marcos, and San Antonio. Originally Live Oak brewed their Pilsner, Pale Ale, and Big Bark year-round, seasonally brewing Oaktober Fest in the fall, Liberation Ale in the winter, and HefeWeizen in the summer. But the Liberation Ale and HefeWeizen have become so popular that they’re now brewed year-round as well, leaving the Oaktober Fest as the only seasonally brewed beer.

During March and April, the brewing process can require eight to ten hours of non-stop multitasking in a day, as these are the two busiest months for the brewery: Of the 6,000 kegs brewed and sold last year, 1,000 to 1,200 were made and sold in March and April.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

“Come March, we enter the balls-to-the-wall brewing time of year,” Steve explains as he moves around the tanks, tubes, pumps, drains, tables, hoses, and various plastic models of Frankenstein that populate the concrete building. The radio blares and echoes classic rock from a back room.

“What’s with all the Frankensteins?” I ask.


“This is a Frankenstein brewery,” Steve explains, “put together from all different parts. And we’re all like a bunch of mad scientists.”

Just about then Julie walks in; she was running slightly late because it had turned into an unusually late night tending bar the night before. Despite the early hour, and her late night, she looks pretty and has a warm, helpful manner. She takes us out to the mill and shows us the grain and the various stations and transformations it’ll go through on its way to becoming a grown-up beer.

Very basically the process breaks down like this: First mill the grain, then take the milled grain and put it in the mash tun. Add hot water to create an enzymatic reaction that breaks down starches into sugar. This new substance is called wort — by pumping wort out of the bottom of the mash tun and back on top, you’ll create a solid bed of spent grain and maximize usable wort. Now move the wort into the kettle, bring it to a boil, and add hops. Boil for an hour and a half and let it rest for 20 minutes. Immediately after this rest period, run the wort through a heat exchanger until it’s at a cool temperature. Next, pump the wort into the fermenter and add yeast to convert the sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol. After fermentation, pump the beer into conditioning tanks to age for various periods of time depending on the type of beer you’re making.

photo / Aaron Stanush 

At Live Oak, brewing takes a little longer because they employ an old world brewing style used in Central Europe and Germany, as they mostly brew lagers. Part of that style involves a multi-temperature, multi-step mash (decoction mash), which affects the flavor of the beer. Most commercial American breweries don’t brew this way, because it’s not an absolutely necessary way of brewing anymore and it takes longer. But Chip insists the extra steps are wholly worth it.

“To get the flavors we’re after, there’re always ways to cheat. But to really duplicate those flavors, there’s only one way to do it,” Chip explains. “Shortcuts only sort of work. It sort of tastes like good enchilada meat if you use onion powder and garlic powder, but it’s better if you use onions and garlic, you know?”

The Live Oak Pilsner, a lager, takes the longest to brew because of the six-week decoction process: Ten days of fermentation and then four weeks of conditioning. Ales can go as quick as 10 days, and HefeWeizen only takes about five days.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

Steve pumps fermented beer from the fermenters to the tanks in the back where the beer will condition. Meanwhile Julie fills the mash tun so that this morning’s wort can be moved into the fermenters around mid-day. After the beer is pumped out of the fermenters, the fermenters have to be cleaned out. This is a messy process in which the yeast (a pungent substance similar in consistency and color to diarrhea) is scooped out of the tanks with a large ladle and put in a cooler for later use. Julie doesn’t even grimace as she slops out the yeast. The tanks are then cleansed with water. Contamination is the biggest fear — everything has to be perfectly clean, since unwanted microbes can ruin a whole batch of beer.

Julie offered us each a pint glass around 8:45am. We sip beer as we watch Julie and Steve work their magic and explain what’s going on.

It’s obvious that there’s no shortage of work to be done at the Live Oak Brewing Company, but it’s also obvious that all this hard work is done with passionate care and attention to detail that you simply can’t find in most large commercial enterprises.

But craft beer isn’t a just a commodity, it’s a pleasure in life. You can brew yellow, watery beer and suck it down by the case, but it’s not that interesting. Practicing a craft is interesting, though. Some people rebuild old sports cars, some people cook fine French cuisine — at Live Oak they brew quality beer, and they practice their craft well.