Had a lot of fun on the Real Ale Bike Ride today in Blanco with about 2000 ri...

Had a lot of fun on the Real Ale Bike Ride today in Blanco with about 2000 riders, live music, BBQ and of course the Real Ale Brewery being the start and finish!

The Blanco river is very pretty and there were gorgeous meadows with wildflowers all over the ride. I noticed a lot more red oaks mixed in with the live oaks out there and quite a bit of running water in the streams. (Growing up in LA I am always startled when I see free-flowing water in the open.)

Kaiwen and Kyle rode with me for the first leg, and then I took off for the back half. It had some solid hill climbs in the heat, and some sweet downhills - I put my extra weight to use and hit 52 mph coming down one of the country coming down Crabapple Road.

The day started out with nice temps, but by the time I hit the finish line I was damn happy this ride came with 2 coupons for some fresh beer right from the brewery.

The tour was very impressive as well. They run (4) 40 barrel systems 6 times a day, and are consistent that they will sell only locally. They showed off their new fancy canning machine that fills the cans with CO2 before filling with beer so it never touches air before sealing.

They also had an impressive array of charred oak barrels from CA, TX and French wineries and Maker's Mark for some of their specialty 8%+ ABV beers. They said that the brewery was founded in Blanco partially due to the quality of the water coming out of the Blanco river that gets just a bit of charcoal filtering after the city cleans the water.

Another neat trick is they do is to take the cool water that flows through the wort chiller to chill the beer and directly cycle the then warm water into the boil for the next batch of beer.

Kenneth Williams was very cool to hang out with Max Bethke as they both read books outside the brewery waiting for us

Originally posted on Facebook on May 18, 2013.