Rahr

December 29, 2004

By Barry Shlachter
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Rahr Red is one variety put out by a Fort Worth microbrewery.

The good news is that Rahr & Sons Brewing Co.,
Fort Worth's new microbrewery, has gotten its beer into bottles and they're selling briskly.

The bad news is that the longnecks are three months late.

It took long hours and considerable emotional endurance to get a third-hand bottling line running so that more lager was pumped into the brown bottles than onto the concrete floor.

"There was a lot of rubbing your forehead and staring at the ground, scratching your head, trying to figure out the proper sequence to achieve proper bottle fill," said Fritz Rahr, 37, president and founder, who hails from a brewing and malting family but learned to wrestle with a used, Italian-made bottler on his own.

"It was a timing issue," Rahr said, adding, "If there weren't crises, everybody would be doing this."

The Texas Christian University MBA, who gave up his career in marketing and sales for railroads to fulfill a long-held dream of starting a brewery, never knew about such things as CO2 evaporators until it became clear that the temperamental bottling machine needed one. "It's been a ride," he said

Two of the microbrewery's three lagers -- Rahr's Red and Rahr's Blonde -- have been shipped to Kings liquor stores and most of the Majestic outlets.

Twenty-five cases of Rahr's Red, an American amber lager, sold out in two days at the Kings outlet on West Berry Street, said Stewart Hellman, one of the store managers. "That was unusual," he said.

"When the blonde came in, I was actually selling them off the dolly as Fritz was rolling them in," Hellman said.

Rahr said that more would have been shipped to stores if the brewery's labeler hadn't gone down, making them reroute the suds into kegs.

The brewery's third beer, Ugly Pug Black Lager, a German-style schwartz bier, is selling only in kegs until its bottle label is approved and printed, which could mean no deliveries until late February or early March.

"Sales have been strong," Rahr said. He and the plant manager, Maurice Giasson, handle the deliveries. "We've been seeing growth from month to month. And with bottles out, we're going to see exceptional growth."

He figures that by Friday, the brewery will have shipped 600 barrels since it started in September, and he predicted production of 2,500 barrels in 2005. There are already plans to double brewing capacity during the summer.

By Jan. 6, the bottled Rahr, retailing for about $7 a six-pack, should be available at Central Market in Fort Worth. Kroger has agreed in principle to stock it at some of its area supermarkets, and Central Market has expressed interest in carrying it in Dallas County, Fritz Rahr said.

The microbrewery, a former Coca-Cola warehouse at 701 Galveston Ave. just south of downtown, now ships to more than 30 area bars, restaurants and hotels, he said. There are no plans now to ship beer beyond Dallas.

The bottles contain the same draft beer that is found on tap, Rahr said.

But he's tweaking the blonde, making it paler to more closely fit the traditional helles style, Germany's answer to Czech pilsner lager.

"James will make a cleaner beer. It will be lighter in color but still very full in body," Rahr said.

Hudec, 32, learned brewing by working at Austin brewpubs and at Hill Country Brewing, then spent a year at the Altstadthof Brewery in Nuremberg, Germany, before starting his own microbrewery, Brenham Brewery, which he operated for 2 1/2 years.