Last night I went to the Rio Salado Brewery for the first time, at the suggestion of a friend. Having recently discovered how much I like the Uptown Brewery, and knowing how much I like good beer, I gave the place a shot.
The location is actually in a business park around the southern Guadalupe border, near Elliot and Priest. It looks very unremarkable, and if it weren't for the sign clearly stating it was a brewery and the torches lit in front of it, I'd never look at the place and think it was a place I could go get beers.
I had been told they had a sampler tray of their different beers, so I ordered that to get an idea of their selection. They had a specialty wheat beer added to the tray, so all together there were seven. The pilsner was pretty good, the pale ale was particularly bitter (not to my liking), there was one that looks like a stout and has a flavor similar to one but does not have anything like the texture of one (which I preferred but I suspect most stout drinkers would not care for), and there was a decent hefe, which I ultimately chose as my main beer.
That choice actually led to one of only two small problems I had with the place. No lemons. And I am aware there are people who can enjoy a hefeweizen without a lemon, but I am not one of them. So the beer drinking experience was diminished by this, and I avoided any further beer drinking that evening.
The only other problem is only a problem in some circumstances. This is not a sports bar, this is a brewery, so there were no sports on television. In fact, there was no television at all that I could see. Instead they had some solid music playing in the background, not overpowering but loud enough to hear. There was a Golden Tee, which I played a few holes on. There was also a nice full sized pool table, free for patrons to use. The couple Mo and I were playing against were just about the only other people in the place, so we weren't worried about losing the table. There was a slight curve to the table in one spot, but not one that couldn't be adjusted for, and by the end of play I was getting much more comfortable with playing again (I hadn't played for about two years previous to last night).
The decor of the rest of the place felt a lot more like a coffee bar than a brew pub. It wsa almost... homey. They don't have food there, and there aren't any lemons for my favorite beer there, so I don't know if I personally would go back, but for a nice relaxing evening sipping beers and shooting pool in a quiet, cozy atmosphere, I would recommend it.
