Background
Brothers Forrest and Patrick Clark and longtime friend Marco Rodriguez opened the doors to Zilker Brewing in April 2015.
Marco and Patrick have known each other for over 20 years attending high school together in Lago Vista. The trio began home brewing in 2008 with brewing with a setup in their garage. They quickly fell in love with the craft and dedicated their time outside of work to this new hobby. In 2015, after years of honing their process, they decided it was time to go all in. They pooled their savings and sought enough investor capital to open the brewery of their dreams. They quit their day jobs and upgraded from the garage to the current brewery and taproom (a converted garage interestingly).
In their first year of business, Zilker Brewing brewed nearly 1000 BBLs with their 15BBL brew system. Since then they have added at least two 30BBL fermenters. Zilker currently employs a local mobile canning company to fill their ever-growing stacks of empty cans destined for beer departments and stores around the area. They are distributing Pale Ale, Marco IPA and Coffee Milk Stout small boys in stores and have begun canning some seasonal tall boys for purchase at the brewery. They currently self-distribute and plan to keep it that way for as long as possible.
Prior to starting Zilker Brewing, Marco worked for the IRS and Patrick was in the insurance industry and Forrest was working for IBM building cloud based systems for major companies around the country. As Forrest traveled around the country for IBM, he had the opportunity to visit over 250 craft breweries that really helped develop Zilker.
Experience
We arrived on a Saturday afternoon to a pretty packed tasting room. Zilker offered 11 beers on tap the day we visited. We lucked out getting a few stools at the bar. I can’t say for sure if they don’t offer flights or they were too busy to offer the day we were there. We got full pours and really enjoyed Heavenly Daze, a hazy IPA & Run it Back, a hazy Pale.
Spicy Boys Chicken food truck was at the brewery that day. We purchased the “original” and it was delicious. The tasting room and patio are pet friendly. Unfortunately we witnessed an unleashed pit bull chomp down on a small dog. The owner finally got his dog to release and then just took off. The smaller pooch was in shock but appeared to have an injury not too serious, thank goodness. Please keep your critter leashed when visiting a crowded brew pub!
There is a Locale Eastside hotel nearby on 5th. Arrive hotel is across the street from Lazarus. Be sure to check out Lazarus Brewing Co. right down the street.
https://zilkerbeer.com/?v=7516fd43adaa
