St. Edward’s University put on its fourth annual Texas beer history event, Hillhops. Students gathered in Munday Library to learn about different local breweries around Texas and got the chance to taste some of the beer samples offered by the brewers. On top of this, Hilltoppers, faculty and staff were able to attend two informational panels from brewers, including sustainability in brewing and another panel about LGBTQIA+ leaders in brewing. 

I had the privilege of speaking with multiple breweries and brewers, including Houston’s very own Saint Arnold Brewing Company. Frank Mancuso, one of Saint Arnold’s sales representatives, explained that he has worked there for 27 years and counting.

“It’s Texas’ oldest craft brewery,” Mancuso said. “We just turned 30 this past year, and we’ve won many, many awards with our beers at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, which is a big Super Bowl beer industry event for our craft beer. So yeah, we certainly do. We think we’re the best brewery in the state.” 

When Mancuso started working at Saint Arnold, there were only eight employees, compared to the hundreds of them now. Mancuso felt like it was important for his brewery to show up to this event, even though they are such a well known brewery, explaining that the younger generation will eventually take the older generations’ place. 

“At some point we didn’t know anything about beer,” Mancuso said. “Somebody had to teach us. So it’s kind of fun to pay it forward to a younger generation of the next people.” 

You may think that working for a beer company is all fun and games, just full of drinking and talking about beer – but that is not the case. I spoke to Hell or High Water Brewery, which is undergoing a name change at the moment, renaming itself Float the River Brewing. They are a small craft brewing company located in North Austin in a suburb called Liberty Hill, just north of Leander. Brian Holmes, one of the owners, and his son Harrison Holmes, the head brewer, run the brewery for the most part. When asked what got them into brewing, Brian said that he started in college.

“Well, I was a home brewer,” Brian said. “This is my son, and he stood around and watched and helped in all those years. I had a career where I traveled globally and liked sampling all the different beers and all the different countries and liked to try to emulate those as a home brewer. That just kind of led to, ultimately, it’s like it might be fun to do commercially.” 

Since the price of alcohol is constantly increasing, you would assume that owning an alcohol company would be pretty profitable. Brian and Harrison explain that this business is almost not profitable at all. 

“It’s a real challenging time,” Brian said. “It has been profitable for the last couple of years. It has not. The economy has been so awful, and there are some breweries here that probably are profitable. They got out ahead of a lagging economy and have probably been able to, if you look around, there are a lot of breweries that aren’t here anymore. A lot of them closed. So yeah, it’s a bit challenging. So I can’t say today or for the last couple of years it’s been profitable at all. But it’s still fun.” 

Brian explains that the artistic side of brewing is what makes it worth the while. 

“Being able to do something different, it’s not your normal nine to five, just sit down at a desk and type away on a computer,” Brian said. “You get to do stuff with your hands. You get to create something and see people enjoy what you’ve created. And it’s really fun to watch people sit down and laugh and have fun while drinking something you made. I’d say being able to be artistic with it and create something fun and new. It’s kind of an industry where you don’t have strict guidelines. You’re able to be free and do whatever you want and have fun with it.”

Apart from being able to speak with some of the brewers, I also got a chance to speak to some students who attended the event. Junior Jake Louk, a business administration major and junior Tommaso Maule, a business major, both attended the event together. 

“We just thought it was super interesting to learn about not only the history of beer, but just local breweries – what they’re doing, how they’re getting started and how they were started,” Louk said. 

Hilltoppers did not attend the event only to learn, but also to enjoy some free beer.

“I just like beer,” Maule said. “I like crafted beer. I like to drink crafted beer with my dad, so I was like having all these beers here for free. I was like, why not show up? And I met a lot of cool people. It was awesome.” 

The last person I had the opportunity to speak with was Sheila Garcia, who works for the Texas Craft Brewers Guild (TCBG), a non-profit organization that represents all the small and independent breweries in the state of Texas. Their goal is to provide education. 

“We hold conferences a couple (of) times a year,” Garcia said. “We host webinars. We also build on camaraderie and networking, so putting brewers in the same room. And when I say brewers, I mean anyone that works at a brewery. So that could be your bartender, your accountant, your graphic designer, your person making the beer. So we create Guild gatherings around nine regions of the state that happen monthly, almost across the state. And then we also fight at the legislature at the capitol to not lose any rights that our brewers already have and to gain more.” 

Garcia, who identifies as being a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, explained why she felt like it was important for queer people to be a part of the brewing industry. 

“Queer people exist, and we exist everywhere,” Garcia said. “I think there’s of course, a stereotype that brewers and craft beer fans are white, male, bearded humans, but that’s not the case. We come in all shapes and sizes and letters, and we represent everyone. There’s definitely a handful of LGBT family that I know in the Austin beer scene and across the state. I think that there can be more if we show ourselves, if we’re able to be who we are and (be) welcomed in the space and show that others are welcoming to us. Then hopefully other people are like, ‘Oh, I am a graphic designer, but I’d really like to work for a craft brewery’ or ‘I’d like to make beer.’ Everyone’s welcome. And I think that’s one thing that’s pretty special about the Texas industry and specifically the Austin Craft beer industry for sure.” 

This is just another example of how, even in niche cultures of the world, there is space for inclusivity and education. Hillhops provides a safe environment for students to learn more about Texas beer history, interact with students, faculty and staff, and just have a good time while drinking some beer.