Meanwhile Brewing pours its house pilsner, a former Great American Beer Festival medalist, into a heavily shaded biergarten with a soccer pitch and a row of food trucks along one side. Shade is what you pick a yard on in an Austin July, and the Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co. answers the same heat with the Rocket 100 Pilsner and the Hell Yes Helles. If you want the hop side instead, Pinthouse pours Electric Jellyfish, which the Austin Chronicle calls the highest-selling craft beer by volume in the city.
Outdoor craft breweries.
The guide
Austin breweries in drinking orderI send people to four beer rooms in Austin: Meanwhile, Lazarus, Austin Beerworks at Sprinkle Valley for the barbecue parked on its lot, and Nosh and Bevvy for the British end. Everything after them runs in my order of drinking: sours first, then the hops, then the British ale and the cask. The yards come next, because for most of the year the shade decides the afternoon before the beer does, then the four rooms I would hand to somebody else, and the four addresses that need a car come last.
The rooms, best first
- The Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co.verified
Brews on the premises and serves it onto a massive patio with live music most nights, and the two beers Nicolai McCrary names in his Infatuation review are the clean ones built for the heat, the Rocket 100 Pilsner and the Hell Yes Helles.
- Meanwhile Brewingverified
Brews on site and pours it into a heavily shaded biergarten with a 5v5 soccer pitch, a playscape and a row of food trucks, and the beer that anchors the wall is the house pilsner, a Great American Beer Festival medalist.
- Pinthouse Pizzaverified
Brews on site at the 2012 Burnet Road brewpub and pours Electric Jellyfish, the highest-selling craft beer by volume in Austin, into biergarten-style communal seating and a patio. The Austin Chronicle is the source for the beer and for that volume claim; the description of the outdoor seating at this door is the brewpub's own.
- Austin Beerworksverified
Pearl Snap is the 5.3 percent pilsner anchoring five year-round beers, poured in a large taproom with a shaded patio. The Austin Chronicle's brewery power rankings placed the brand sixth in Austin in 2023 and twelfth in 2024, and the 2024 piece calls this original Industrial Terrace room one of the highlights of the Austin beer experience.
- Hold Out Brewingverified
Hold Out brews in small batches and serves the beer fresh on site. It describes indoor and outdoor dog friendly seating on its own page, and nobody outside the business has written about the patio, so check it before you plan around it.
- Oddwood Brewingverified
The Infatuation's review names the patio that 'spills into the parking lot' and the KG BBQ trailer parked on it, so you drink outside here and eat barbecue without leaving. The same review is the source for the saison, the pale ale and the lager.
- Draught House Pub & Breweryverified
More than twenty of the seventy-four tap handles pour beer brewed on the premises, and the Austin Chronicle names NutBush Extra Special Bitter, Trophy English pale ale, a Vanilla porter, Blackpool Bitter and Pumpkinhead off that house list. The outdoor room is a permanent Oktoberfest fixture built on the former parking and tailgating area, with rows of picnic tables under a striated tent. Austin Chronicle readers also voted it Beer Selection in the 2022 Best of Austin poll.
- Austin Beerworks - Sprinkle Valleyverified
Close to two dozen house-brewed beers poured on a 64-acre site whose patio runs to an uncountable number of picnic tables, with the Yellow Bell Tacos truck parked on it selling smoked meat tacos.
- Fast Friends Beer Companyverified
The Austin Chronicle's 2024 brewery power rankings place Fast Friends 14th in Austin on a score of 86.4 and its 2023 edition describes the site as a three-acre lot carrying a festive two-story family beer garden alongside the taproom and a lower-level lounge. The Infatuation's Austin review adds a dog-friendly patio. The stated beer program is traditional European lagers, and the Chronicle names Fritz German Pilsner and Vadr Dark Czech Lager off it.
- Hopsquad Brewing Coverified
An open, warehouse-style taproom that CultureMap describes as built like a small warehouse and open to the hot air, family and dog friendly, with five core beers anchored by a roggenbier. The 2024 build of an air-conditioned cocktail room next door is the operator's own account of how open-air the original room is.
- Celis Breweryverified
Twelve thousand square feet of beer garden with a music stage and whatever trucks are parked that week, attached to the taproom of the family that revived Belgian witbier and still pours Celis White.
- St. Elmo Brewing Companyverified
A production brewery pouring its own kolsch, IPAs and kettle sours into a large shaded patio with picnic tables and live music, with a burger kitchen operating inside the taproom. Nicolai McCrary calls that burger counter, Patty Palace, his favorite smashburger in Austin.
- Lazarus Brewing Co.verified
Brews its own beer on East Sixth and you drink it on the patio. Adele Hazan described a shady patio you and your dog sit on, and Nicolai McCrary, writing six years later, still put the spacious patio in the same sentence as the beer and the tacos.
- Central Machine Worksverified
The brewery took over a 1940s steel fabrication shop and runs an enormous outdoor beer garden that takes dogs and children.
- St. Elmo Brewing Company - Springdaleverified
This room IS the beer garden: it opened in September 2024 as St. Elmo's eastward expansion, a purpose-built garden at 8110 Springdale Rd with food trucks parked on site from the first night (CultureMap, 11 September 2024). The Austin Chronicle's 2024 brewery power rankings name the Springdale room by address while ranking the brewery fourth in Austin, so two outside writers have described this yard and not just the brewery itself.
- Oasis Texas Brewing Companyverified
It has brewed on the bluff 450 feet above Lake Travis since 2014, pouring Slow Ride Pale Ale and Mama Tried Vienna Lager.
- Nomadic Beerworksverified
Nomadic describes the patio at this premises on its own page and nobody else has written about it, so take it as the brewery's own word before you drive out. The Austin Chronicle's beer-garden write-up about Nomadic covers the second taproom in Sunset Valley, not this one. What anybody outside the business has put on the record for the Woodbury Drive room is the beer program.