After more than 10 years as a lawyer, Michael Peticolas walked away from his practice and become a respected leader in the Dallas craft brewery community. Michael, along with his wife, Melissa, opened Peticolas Brewing Co. in December 2011. His legal expertise was an asset from the start. In 2013, Peticolas was elected to the board of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild to help shape industry legislation in favor of small brewery owners. In play was Texas Senate Bill 639, a new law that simultaneously enabled alcohol distributors to profit from the sale of a brewery’s distribution rights and revoked the same privilege for brewery owners. The law passed in 2013. The next year, Peticolas along with Revolver and Live Oak Brewing filed a lawsuit against the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to overturn the bill. District Judge Karin Crump of Austin presented the final summary judgment in August 2016 and ruled in the breweries’ favor.
For the first year of existence, Peticolas was on his own, brewing 800 barrels of beer a year all by himself. That’s not all he did by himself — he was also Peticolas’ lone brewery rep, salesman and distributor.
But then Peticolas Brewing began to grow. The brewery won gold at the Great American Beer Festival in its first year and again in their third year.
Early in 2017, they built out a 2,500-square foot taproom. A second floor with stage and table-top games and an open-air space near the lengthy bar.
Experience
We arrived on a Wednesday afternoon to join a few other patrons. This is a an interesting tasting room in that it is broken up into three stories. There is no beer on the bottom floor, just a few tables. There are stairs up to the second floor where the handles are located. They also have a lift to bring wheelchairs or people who struggle with stairs up to the beer. The third floor has games available. One can peer through a couple windows on the second floor into the brewing equipment.
We started with a flight of the two IPA’s, Too Soon and Sit Down or I’ll Sit You Down. Wintervention was a nice spiced winter time Ale that was good enough to take a to-go pack with us. We also liked the Stout, Turn Out the Lights.
They do not have a kitchen but you can bring food in or enjoy the occasional food truck.
When in Dallas also check out Community Brewing Co and Deep Ellum Brewing.
