Background
Jeffrey Stuffings with his brother Michael Steffing founded Jester King Brewery in 2010. The idea behind Jester King was to create a brewery that follows traditional Belgian methods such as blending and spontaneous fermentation.
Jester King is located near Dripping Springs, west of Austin. The brothers began renting a large spanse of land. They cultivate native yeasts and bacteria from local fruits and flowers (Texas Hill Country is rich in agriculture), installed a coolship, utilize local well water, and take advantage of the Texas malt industry.
In 2016, Jester King Brewery purchased 58 acres surrounding its current location. The owners planned to farm crops, plant a vineyard, raise livestock and, eventually, open a restaurant. Close to 100 fruit trees were planted on half an acre of the property. In addition they have planted medlar, paw paw, fig, Asian persimmon, pomegranate, plum, apricot, and pluot. They have also added Nigerian Dwarve goats, the smallest of all dairy goats.
Garrett Crowell, who was the head brewer, left in late 2016 with hopes to open a brewery of his own about 50 miles west of Austin in Johnson City. Averie Swanson, who in 2013 started volunteering at Jester King grew into assistant brewer became the Head Brewer.
In 2018 Jester King Brewery purchased the land that the brewery resides on. It bought Ceres Park Ranch, which also includes the wood-covered Ceres Park Ranch Event Center (which will eventually open for events and weddings) and Stanley’s Farmhouse Pizza.
Late in 2019 Averie Swanson, Jesters Head Brewer left and moved to Chicago. At the time of this blog a replacement for Averie had not been disclosed.
Experience
We arrived on a Sunday not long after they opened. The parking was already quite full and the beer lines already long at the kitchen bar. There are stairs to access the property but they also have ramp that leads to both the kitchen bar as well as the other serving area. We checked out the kitchen bar that is near many picnic tables under a cover and many more in the sun.
Certain times and days of the week one can obtain food from the kitchen bar. It appears they specialize in a variety of pizza but they do have some other items. Ten different beers available on that day ranging from a Porter to Saisons to spontaneous wild ales.
Honestly, our whole experience with Jester King was rather frustrating. We arrived and stayed one Thursday only to discover they were having a private event that closed the brewery to visitors during the entire opening hours.
Fortunately, we ended up a having a lovely time in Dripping Springs at Salt Creek BBQ and Acopon Brewing in town. We attempted to contact the brewery to get info on handicap accessibility via phone, email and Instagram. It took a posting on Facebook to learn that they recently made additions to the property to accommodate handicapped visitors.
We decided to return to the area on Sunday. When we arrived to the enormous property located on a dirt road we saw no signs directing us to those few parking spots. Unfortunately, there only 3-4 handicapped spaces near the ramp entry, but one person parked taking up two spots. There are many stairs and the ramps are rather steep.
For a first time visitor it was not apparent where to go. Just follow the crowd. The big barn had a waiting line of at least 30 folks to even get a beer. A second bar we discovered up the hill, as one of us waited in the car, had fewer folks in line and bottles to go. Considering the effort we went thru we had to leave with a couple of pricey bottles. Granted it is a lovely setting for the able bodied, but we think it may be another example of an overrated brewery.
We left with a Daswunderkind blended Saison and Coolship Roadtrip. We found Daswunderkind to be a complex yet smooth easy drinking Saison. The Coolship Roadtrip had a tart funky nose with a moderately sour, bit of funk & barrel on the pallet.
When in the area also check out Last Stand Brewing.
https://jesterkingbrewery.com/
