SAN MARCOS, Texas — Well, Austinites and many people in Central Texas love beer. Because of that, local breweries are always trying out different things to push the envelope.
This is why Davy Pasternak describes beer-making as a mixture of science and art.
"Yeah, talk about something that people can express themselves like a piece of art would, but you consume it and the community comes together around it ... that's awesome," he said.
Pasternak is the owner and head brewer at Roughhouse Brewing located in San Marcos. Before opening up, he worked at Jester King in Dripping springs as well as Blue Owl in Austin, where he was the head brewer.
"It's cool seeing how we sort of pay homage to the traditional techniques but sort of in our way through our lens," he said. "The way that we're making beer is how I've always wanted to make it."
But the beer he's most excited for isn't in the large oak foeders that he has in his brewery. It's buried underground in a natural cave found on the land.
"The layer of dirt was up to here," he said while standing in the cave. "All of this was hand excavated."
He said that before they found it and cleared it, the cave had been filled in by farmers who owned the land before. He thinks it was to make sure cows didn't fall in.
Now, it holds 400 to 500 gallons of a beer that he's never tried to make before. Actually, no one in the state has.
"As far as Texas goes, I'm fairly confident that we're the only ones that have a cave where we're trying to ferment beer in," he said. "When people ask what type of beer it is, I say it's a Texas cave beer, of course."
The beer was also "spontaneously fermented" with the help of his friends at Jester King Brewing. They lent him the "coolship," where the beer spent a night out under the stars. Spontaneous fermentation means that no extra yeast was added to the wort. Instead, the beer ferments from whatever was on it during that night and anything that gets to it through the barrels inside the cave.
"This is as about traditional as it gets, to use a cave feature for its steady temperature and even climate, to ferment beer," he said. "So yeah, this whole project has been a labor of love obviously."
A labor of love. Mixing science with the art of brewing to make just what he wants.
"You know, we're a small family-run brewery where we can work, and the effort spent is OK because it's for this community and trying to reflect this property," he said. "So I think we're very fortunate for that."
The beer will be ready to come out of the barrels sometime in the beginning of 2021. Pasternak said it's a little more up in the air because he's not sure how everything will react in the cave, since this is their first run.
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