Weekend Activity #2 - St. Arnold's Brewing Company

We had an amazingly awesome day planned for today. The card drawn for this weekend was 

Time for our next planned event!

The magic cards tell us we are to tour the St. Arnold's Brewery and The Beer Can House. Now, I know what everyone is already thinking on this one..."How have you lived in Houston for over 2 years and never been to either of these places???" Honestly, I can't tell you. I've been on numerous brewery tours and I always like them. Plus, I am a big fan of beers, especially good craft beers.

Breakfast and Travel:

The day started out at Baby Barnaby's in Montrose. This was our 2nd or 3rd choice. We had started out going to someplace Lauren found on Yelp that was one of the top ranked diners. When Apple maps made us miss the new connection from 290 to I-10, we got re-routed. I was unaware that this diner was almost at Hobby Airport. Needless to say, as we stopped for gas, I looked up and found Baby Barnaby's.

As for breakfast, I have to report...it was REALLY good. Lauren had some Migas and I had the breakfast tacos. It was really tasty, the eggs in the taco were fresh, and the salsa, which tasted homemade, had a good amount of zing to it to match a really good flavor. The potatoes that came with it were fantastic also.

But the highlight of the visit? The people. The waiter working out side decided to hit on me a couple times (including once telling me that I look like a "young Garth Brooks". I laughed hard at that one. But also, there was a group of local ladies next to us with a pet pit bull that was cute as hell. They were all "fitness" ladies, although they looked like they were more into the fitness discussion rather then actually doing anything. There was also the "Montrose Douchebag" next to us...but I expected that. Believe it or not, I didn't mind him nearly as much. Overall, I would defiantly go back to this place.

We then proceeded to head to the St. Arnold's Brewery. This was an adventure by itself. First, we got to go past some really cool graffiti...the kind that is actually art work.

I apologize that I have to use a snapchat photo. I only had so much time to capture this and was about to make a funny snap for a friend that we were trying to get to the brewery too. However, after this, the trip went to crap. For some reason, Houston decided they would like to shut down I-45 this weekend, and everyone was trying to get through this area. However, we eventually made our way to the Brewery.

St. Arnold's Brewery:

We arrived at St. Arnold's a few minutes after 11:00AM. This worked out, as the place opens around that time. By time we made it inside (more road construction in the area), the Beer Hall was full. I was really shocked to see the number of children there for birthday parties. It legit filled up almost half the table seating. However, we paid our $10 per person admission, received our cups, and went in to begin our tour and drinking.

The problems for me personally started at this point. You see, as a part of this experiment, we knew we would be doing things we may not like. I do not like most of St. Arnold's beers. I like Hefes - light, crisp, cold. The first beer I saw was St. Arnold's Icon Series Hefe - the Amarillo Hefeweizen. It had a decent taste to start, but there was a weird aroma in it...some kind of piney/clove smell that ruined it for me.

St. Arnold's Icon Series Hefe - the Amarillo Hefeweizen

At this point, between the ruined beer, the lack of seating, and unorganized tour setup, I was done. I literarily drink root beer the rest of the time we were there. Lauren did have a couple beers and seemed to enjoy herself. She also added to my brewery t-shirt collection by getting me this shirt

I can report this shirt is one of those extremely comfortable shirts that I will enjoy wearing, even if I don't like the beer on it. But Lauren, God love her, knew I was ready to get out of there. However, I did get a couple other good pictures that I want to share. And the building itself is really cool. It is definitely an old building from who knows how many years ago. I would recommend the tour to anyone who likes brewery tours.

Downtown Houston...I love this skyline

Another view...beautiful

This is a really cool picture of the grain silos outside the brewery

Lauren is going to kill me for this...but I love that she let me take this picture

The end of the day

The day ended with some errand running that we needed to get done. So we headed out to Katy. First, we had to make a stop at Academy. Lauren wanted my help picking out her Father's Day gift for her Dad. That was exciting. He's going to love what we picked out and she got him. From there, we ended up at Men's Warehouse, finishing up the tuxedos for the wedding. Luckily that is over. But then the highlight of the night happened. We picked up her parent's dog so they could go out of town tonight too.

This means PUPPY SLEEPOVER! Lauren's parents have an English Lab named Abby that weighs about 75lbs. Needless to say, this is more than our 2 dogs combined. So, she's like a horse over here. However, I had to mention this because I wanted to use this picture. After we got home from running around and spending some time in the future in-law's pool, we got home and passed out dog biscuits.

Abby (L) and Lola (R) eating biscuits.

I thought it was too funny seeing them look like twins in the way they are eating their biscuits.

I'm not sure what the next adventure we will have will be. We haven't picked a new card yet. And I know at the end of the month, I will be going out of town. So there may not be doing any new cards this month. However, I will still try to update what our adventures are without card direction.