Well, it’s really more like having a beer while sitting at the Rick Perry booth at Hill’s Cafe.

Hill’s is an Austin institution, known for a few Texan delicacies. Each booth has a celebrity photo and plaque — Willie Nelson and other musicians are represented, as is the Texas governor.

I’m having the hamburger steak with (gobs of brown gravy) corn nuggets and some veg. Anri is going with the chicken-fried steak with yellow gravy.

Giddyup!

Yes, we have managed to find another watering hole in a neighborhood north and west of the UT campus. The Draught House has a boatload of tap handles from most any respectable brewery in the world (European ones included).

They also brew two house beers — right now those are a Shamrock Stout and an unnamed beer to brewed soon. I did not try them, as the tap list was so diverse. So, technically it’s a brewery, but the rest of the 60 or so taps, and the outdoor patio that are the main draw.

I am having a Rye Pale Ale from Real Ale Brewery in Blanco. It’s crisp and spicily-hopped (as you might expect), but so heavy that you couldn’t drink it in the heat of a Texas summer.

As Andrea just told Courtney — “This is what we do on vacation. Take pictures of Patrick drinking beer.”

We’re now cruising around the Whole Foods flagship store, which is actually under the global headquarters of the company. Courtney works here, and is showing us around “the office”.

One of the cool things about the store is the fact that you can *drink* while you shop! To test that, I stepped into Beer Alley (the aisle/walk-through cooler in the middle of the store that houses the myriad beers) to find something local — Austin Amber from Independence Brewing Company.

It’s a smooth brown beer that would complement many of the hot food choices available in the store’s cafes.

Good stuff. We’ll be stopping by later for some drinks for later.

Did I say you could drink in the store?

We scored the last two seats on the flight this morning, and we’re (finally) on the ground here in Tejas ready to find beers and some ‘cue.

But first, we stopped by Courtney’s pad to pick her up and begin our local guided tour.

First stop: Las Manitas Cafe, off Congress, for some Mexican lunch. Probably not ready for a beer yet, but Courtney promises that there are some in our future.

Oh, and the Hook ‘Em Horns thing is our way of trying to blend in around here.

Giddyup!

We’ve been campaigning for for the ability to buy Dogfish Head beers for almost 5 years now, and here’s our first nutty purchase — Red and White.

The idea here is take a known beer style (wit, or Belgian white), and mix it with some grape must (red) and see what happens. Creative? Yes. Tasty?

Mark’s expression is probably a bit dramatic, especially since the beer is almost non-descript in its palette impact. The subtleness of the coriander/orange flavors from the wit meld well enough with the grapey flavors, but the combination of the two doesn’t really create anything spectacular — except for Mark’s expression.