The new Saint Arnold Brewery.: Daniel Carlson Let’s be honest: I’m still a little drunk, and relying more heavily than usual on the spell-checker built into good ol’ MS Word. Some of you may choose to interpret my statement to mean I’m intoxicated with the happiness and camaraderie one expects to sail home on after spending the evening with friends and strangers at a party, even (or especially) if the party is at a brewery. But you and I really know that when I say “drunk,” I mean the classic kind, like with alcohol and a trip to Jack in the Box. However, know now that I’m not the rosy-colored-glasses drinker who tends to think every place is great once they have a few (or eight…ish) beers. The shindig for the new location of Saint Arnold Brewing Co. was great all on its own. The copious servings of ice cold Texas Wheat were just icing on the beer cake, or something. You know what I mean.

It took me a little longer than I’d planned to make my way to the brewery, which is on Lyons Avenue just north of downtown. (I was coming from the south, missed the turn off Main, and blah blah blah. I took a relatively quick but still looping path to get there, as if I was slowly making smaller concentric circles around the site.) It’s in the middle of a bunch of industrial buildings and neighborhoods that could easily and not inaccurately be called “slum-resembling”. The nearest landmark is the awesome burger/hot dog joint Ray’s Franks, on Nance, just the other side of the highway(s). But I eventually found the place and walked in, expecting something great and getting it.The brewery tour, led by David Jenny.: Daniel Carlson

The new brewery is still undergoing a bit of a polish, as was evident from the impromptu tour I latched onto, which was led by Saint Arnold employee and possessor of a solid goatee, David Jenny. But despite a few piles of dust on the brewery floor, the factory’s just about ready to start producing a ton of awesome beer. The new location, formerly a food distribution venue for the HISD, is 12,000 square feet and houses three 240-barrel fermenters, which will be added to the stuff they’ve already got; in other words, they’ll be able to kick out 100,000 barrels a year, a heavenly amount of rich brown ale. The new equipment was even apparently shipped here from a Bavarian monastery that hadn’t used them to make beer since 1992. The bottom line: This is some serious equipment meant to up the label’s production and help expand their business. What does that mean for you and me? Sweet, sweet beer.

I took to Saint Arnold’s not long after I got to Houston; someone put one in my hand at Coffee Groundz, and that was that. The event at their new brewery was ostensibly a ribbon-cutting meant to usher in a new age for the company, but really, it was just an excuse to party, and though the food went pretty quickly (I took, like, seven flautas, so sorry to everyone behind me), the free beer flowed all night long. The second floor of the building has a massive event room lined with tables, and around the corner there’s another party area. Even the garbage cans had been branded with brewery bumper stickers.

The new location is also tricked out with special piping, a reverse osmosis system to purify Houston water, and a staggering amount of machinery run on pneumatic valves, but the point of all of it is to keep making a great, locally-based beer, and that’s what Saint Arnold clearly plans on doing. Their focus is on the product and the people, as evidenced by the laid-back, denim-clad shindig to celebrate their new home, and as long as they keep doing what they’re doing, the beer — and you, and I — will reap the benefits. Serving foamy Saint Arnold brews.: Daniel Carlson
See more photos from the Saint Arnold Ribbon-Cutting