Six Beers Over Texas

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Texas Hill Country, about 1 hour from both San Antonio and Austin. I went there in search of Texas wine (more about that later) but want to write here about a unique B&B in the lovely German-inflected town of Fredericksburg, named recently by Money magazine as one of the 25 best places to retire in the United States.


Maybe the magazine meant retiring for the night because I learned there are 300 B&B’s in this town of only 11,000 people. There may be more B&B’s per square foot there than anywhere for the more than 1 million tourists it attracts each year. But what I like about this B&B is its novelty: When you stay at the Fredericksburg Brewing Company, you get a queen bed upstairs and a four-beer sampler each night downstairs in the brew pub. This Bed & Brew offers a nice way to unwind after a day of antique or art shopping, visiting museums like the National Museum of the Pacific War, taking a Texas cooking class at Fredericksburg Culinary Arts or even a day of wine tasting. The beers all come in at about 5% alcohol so it is a winding down.

The beer menu at the Fredericksburg Brewing Company is ever-changing but there are usually a range of six types on hand and the menu features many German dishes and some down-home Southern items like deep-fried pickles (surprisingly good).