Kevin Floyd, Beer Director, The Hay Merchant, Anvil, Underbelly, Beer Recs, Where to buy Beer, Where to drink Beer, Houston, TX, Texas, Dallas, Restaurants, Bars, American Beer, Craft Beer, Draft Beer, Canned Beer, Belgian Beer, Best Beers, Favorite Beers, Bartender, Best Bars For Beer In Houston, Ale, IPA, Liquor Stores, Flanders Red Ale, Pale Ale, Cask Beer, Flying Dog, Yeast, Keg, American Style Ale, Stouts, IPA, Encyclopedia, Beer Resources

Q & A with Beer Director Kevin Floyd

Q. Tell us about Hay Merchant:

A. Hay Merchant is a craft beer bar, we don't sell any liquor. We have seventy-five drafts and five cask engines. We own forty of our own firkins and I mail those off to different breweries, have them filled with interesting, one-off interpretations of their standard beers. It’s one hundred percent craft micro and import focused. It's built and designed completely around the concept of selling the perfect glass of beer.

Q. What makes a perfect glass of beer?

A. There are a variety of factors. First, there's selection, bringing in the proper product. Second, the mechanism that you use to serve your draft beer, a really well-designed, well-maintained clean cask system. And third, a really well-educated staff. Our staff is all Cicerone certified, every one of them went through a 30-hour lecture course on beer, beer history and styles, and every one of them is a beer enthusiast in their own right.

Q. How do you pick the producers of the beer you serve?

A. Being in Texas, we’re pretty limited. It’s one of the more restricted states as far as availability goes.

I pick beers on number one, flavor and quality. The beer has gotta be good. Number two is my relationship with the brewery itself, if I know the brewery, if I've drank from them before, then that could influence it. If I’ve never had them before, then I'm gonna be more experimental. And the third is what I think fits the expectations of my guests.

Beer | The Low-Down on Draft, Glass & Cans

Draft

Draft beer is the most volatile. When you serve it on draft, you, the public and the borrower, has the responsibility of trying to ensure that the draft system you’re using properly represents the beer. A lot of times when you get really bad draft beer, it's not because the beer is bad, it’s because the draft system is bad. It’s not cleaned properly. It’s not maintained properly. The one thing that sets Hay Merchant apart, is that we clean our own lines. We’re really passionate about keeping our system tuned in properly, so we are attempting to serve the absolute best draft beer possible.

Glass Bottles

Glass bottles are pretty stable. It takes a lot to mess up a glass bottle, but it’s not a completely sealed container. Even when it’s brown glass, light still does penetrate. Light destroys hops. So you start to get light degradation from the glass. Glass bottles are capped. Caps are really fairly efficient sealing mechanisms, but they're not perfect, so you get slow oxidation of the beer.

Canned

It’s completely hermetically sealed. It’s totally opaque. The inside of the can is coated with a special polymer to keep the metals from influencing the flavor. So if you really want to taste the beer the way that brewing can make it taste, with no kind of interference from anything else, cans would be the way to go. The mechanism itself hasn’t necessarily influenced the taste of the product. It’s the way the product is handled inside that vessel that influences it.

Beer | Recommendations

Find | Beer Resources

Oxford Companion To Beer

A must-have for anyone interested in beer.

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Drink | Domestic Beer

Colorado | Avery

They are a small producer in Boulder, known for big American style ales, Russian imperial stouts, big barleywines and big double IPAs.

Texas

512

They’re out of Austin and are one of the most exciting. They’re making super consistent beers.

Buffalo Bayou

The owner literally puts his cellphone number on every keg he sells and if you ever have a problem, just call him and he’ll show up at like two in the morning with a keg in the back of his truck. He’s putting out two beers, one of them is called 1836, which is the year that Houston was founded. It’s a copper ale, kind of a sessionable English-style pale ale, a very approachable beer. Then he’s putting out a series of beers he calls Secessionist and Secessionist Number One, a big old gingerbread stout and really good.

Left Hand

They’re known for really setting a new standard in nitro-draft technology. Nitro draft technology was developed by Guinness and was actually developed to simulate the experience of a cask beer. Left Hand has taken that kind of technology and really started doing interesting beers with it.

Karbach Brewery

They just opened this year in Houston and hit the ground running. They hired Eric Warner as the brew master, he was the head brewer of Flying Dog. He’s like one of the top 10 brewers in our country, easily. He literally wrote the book on German-style hefeweizen, incredibly knowledgeable guy, so Karbach hired the best they could find and they’re putting out some pretty stellar beers at a decent amount, a decent size volume, and they’re super consistent. I mean every beer they make is good.

Jester King

They’re fascinating because they’re taking the Belgian / Brussels approach and attempting to do a hundred percent barrel fermentation, wild fermentation, farmhouse style beers. Most breweries are super clean hygienic laboratories and they absolutely control every stage of the production, the fermentation and everything else. Farmhouse breweries are more old school. They allow the natural yeast that’s present in the environment to begin fermentation and that always leads to unexpected results, and a lot of times those beers are sour, kind of dry and aggressive.

It’s very uncommon in the world to see this kind of production and it’s incredibly uncommon to see them in the states and they're the only brewery in Texas that's even attempting to do this. The reason why it’s so interesting is because you lose control and so if the yeast is not with you, you will lose all of the beer you’re trying to make. It’s a hugely risky venture, but if it’s successful, it’s really an interesting beer.

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Drink | Domestic Beer - Cans

Dale’s Pale Ale

It’s one of my favorite go-to beers. You can take them in a bag hiking to the top of a mountain, sit there and have a beer, and you can’t do that with a bottle and you definitely can’t do that with drafts.

Southern Star

They’re in Conroe and have been canning, but only locally available.

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Drink | What To Drink When You Can’t Drink Small Craft Beer

Samuel Adams & Sierra Nevada

If I'm sitting in the airport and there’s nothing super local, super small, super craft on tap, I'm probably gonna drink Sam Adams or Sierra Nevada.

Even though Sam Adams is like the 300-pound gorilla in the room, I think he’s like 800,000 barrels a years or something like that and you wouldn't considered it craft. He’s still craft. He embodies the idea of what small business entrepreneurship was from the ground up and taking a risk in doing things. So even though a lot of craft drinkers say, ‘Oh, Sam Adams is a sell out’ blah, blah, blah, I still respect what they do when they make the beer, and Sierra Nevada is the same way. It is the quintessential example of the American pale ale style and it’s a good beer.

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Drink | Belgian Beer

Brouwerij Van Eecke

One of my favorite breweries is Brouwerij Van Eecke. It’s a little brewery in Poperinge, in a tiny town in Flanders, outside of Bruges. The only thing Poperinge does, basically, is grow hops. Van Eecke is a multigenerational brewery, with the 7th generation brew master in charge now. They’ve been making the same beer for all these generations in one of the richest hop regions, so all of their beers have really interesting hop complexities to them that for most American craft drinkers, we associate with the big American IPA, hugely citrusy, usually piney. I love those beers, but the Belgian hop experience is different. It’s still hoppy, but it’s a lot more subtle and complex and intricate.

Cuvée Des Jacobins Rouge

Bockor is a family-owned brewery. I think it’s in their fifth or sixth generation of family ownership. The brew master that was alive during the war, sought shelter at a monastery and the abbot’s name was Jacobin. When the war was over, he went back to brewing and he brewed a line of beers called Jacobins, in honor of this friar that protected him and the family has carried on the tradition. Jacobins Rouge is sweet and sour. It has almost a vinegar quality to it.

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Recommendations | Houston, TX

Find | Liquor Stores

For Craft Beer | Spec’s Liquor Warehouse

They’re giant and the Spec’s downtown location is where they keep all of their really good craft beers.

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Eat | Restaurants

Da Marco Cucina e Vino

High-end Italian, very small, very exclusive, higher price point.

Feast

It’s rustic European cuisine. They are a couple of Englishmen that had been friends for a long time and they serve simple, country-style English food. It’s very hearty but really, really delicious.

Hugo’s

It is classic Mexican high-end cuisine. It’s some of the best food in town.

London Sizzler

It is an English-style curry house, so a little bit of an English slant on traditional Indian cuisine. It is phenomenal. I go in there and I just order randomly off the menu. I don’t care what it is, it’s always really good, huge depths of flavors and complex spices. Just amazing food.

Common Table

It’s a little restaurant in downtown Dallas. They have a good beer list and good food.

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Eat | Off The Beaten Path

Vieng Thai

It’s this little Thai place that is super off the beaten path in kind of a scary section of town. It's down this industrial highway, past the factory and it’s BYOB. The food there is just incredible. I'm not sure how to pronounce the names of the dishes and I just order randomly off the menu and get different stuff. It used to be really quiet and then we started tweeting about it and now you see more people in there, so it’s becoming more well known.

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Eat & Drink | Wine Bars

Vinoteca Posćol

It’s a little Italian-inspired charcuterie and wine bar. They've got small plates and really simple food.

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Drink | Bars

Double Trouble

It's this small little bar owned by two women, Robin Berwick and Robin Whalan. Robin Berwick actually worked for us at Anvil for awhile before she left to do her own thing. They don’t have a cocktail program, but Robin buys all the right ingredients. So if you want a cocktail, you can get one. If you want a Lone Star, you can get that. If you want to just hang out, you can do that too. It's a cool spot.

Grand Prize

It’s more of an industry bar. You'll see a lot of bartenders and chefs hanging out there. They've got a big selection of products and the bartenders go and make a few things.   

Liberty Station Bar

It was an old gas station and they kept a lot of the original stuff. It's this little diamond in the rough at the very end of Washington Avenue. Washington Avenue is the glitzy, glammy, a lot of money, but no soul kind of place. If you're into good stuff, you don't go to Washington. If you want a good time and party, you go to Washington. Charles, the guy that owns it, only sells craft beer on tap. He does have Bud Light in the bottle, because he's on Washington, so he's going to have this overwhelming crush of people who want that stuff. But during the week, it's a little slower. They have this big patio when the weather's nice and you sit outside. 

Petrol Station

It’s like the hippie version of Hay Merchant. As much as Hay Merchant is academic, focused and has a wide range of different options, Ben Fullelove who owns it, doesn't care about anybody's opinion. The attitude is really interesting and I just like hanging out there.

Poison Girl

The owner Scott is really into bourbons and has an insanely big whisky selection. It’s a hipstery bar with a bunch of pinball machines and a dirt patio in the back with half-broken chairs. It's right across the street from one of the most high-dollar, fine dining restaurants in town, which I think is funny. If you don't go and stare, you'll never find it.

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Recommendations

Details of Kevin Floyd’s recommendations on beer and where to eat, drink and shop in Houston, TX.

City Guides

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