Pinthouse Pizza
Electric Jellyfish is the highest-selling craft beer by volume in Austin. The town has worn its name down to two letters.21
Why go
This is the Burnet Road brewpub, opened in 2012 and the first of five Pinthouse doors, which the operator calls the one that started it all.3 The hazy is what people come for. The medals are on other beers. Green Battles IPA took gold in American-Style Strong Pale Ale at the 2024 World Beer Cup. Nomura, the double Jellyfish, took bronze in Strong Hoppy Beers at the Texas Craft Brewers Cup.12 The rotating IPA bench runs Training Bines, Bailing Room and Fully Adrift, which Eric Puga argues should be the most coveted IPA in town. The house pour on this corner is Joe's Magical Pils.1 Puga's own ranking has moved the other way over the same years, from first place in Austin to eighth.1
Order this / avoid
- Electric Jellyfish, once, on its home ground. The 2023 ranking records third-party bars charging up to $1.25 an ounce for it.2
- Then Joe's Magical Pils, which is this room's own pour. Fully Adrift if it is on.21
- Avoid: the cheeseburger pizza, which is gone. The operator cut it and Puga is still writing about the loss.1
What locals & experts say
- Eric Puga, in the Austin Chronicle's 2024 brewery rankings, puts Pinthouse eighth in the city and is affectionate about this door:
the Burnet store – our OG taproom – still makes it feel like the glory days of Austin beer, back in 2015.
1 - Puga in the 2023 edition, on the beer itself:
Indeed, Jellyfish is a goddamned Austin treasure.
That piece also carries the Nomura bronze, the platinum Crushie Award for Coolest Taproom Design and a gold for the can design.2 - Three placings here are votes, and read as votes. Craft Beer & Brewing's readers put Pinthouse sixth favorite Small Regional Brewery in 2024 and ninth in 2023, and thirteenth favorite American Hazy IPA Brewer. The Statesman's Best Beer Selection award is a community choice.1
Good to know
- Which door this is: 4729 Burnet Road, the 2012 original, with communal biergarten seating and a patio. Pinthouse runs five premises under two names. The flagship brewery is a separate address at 2201 East Ben White Boulevard, a 29,000 square foot room with its own kitchen and Sicilian-style sourdough pizzas. The other three are South Lamar, Round Rock and San Antonio.3
- The operator's own account of the food: dough, sauce, pretzels, bread and dressings made in house daily. That is the operator talking about itself.6
- The Crushie for taproom design has no room attached to it. The paragraph around it is about the Ben White store, which makes that the likely subject and not a settled one.2
- Hygiene: clean at this door. Austin Public Health scores 4729 Burnet Rd 95 in October 2025, and 98, 98, 91 and 99 before that. The South Lamar branch holds its own permit with its own 97 and 97, and those numbers belong to that address.5
Verdict
should-visit — Nobody takes a booking. Drink the beer and judge the pie yourself, because I have not found a published review of a Pinthouse pizza.