Suds Monkey Kitchen & Brewery Dripping Springs.

Suds Monkey Kitchen & Brewery Dripping Springs

Greg Plummer brewed at Stone in California before he built this, and he names the beers for phases in the life of a cartoon monkey.1

Why go

Greg Plummer took his American Brewers Guild certification into commercial brewing in 1996 at Michigan's Big Buck Brewery, moved on to Stone Brewing in California, then left the industry to save the money it takes to open your own.1 He opened this with Steve Gray, who runs payroll, taxes and licensing, on a half-barrel system he was already planning to replace with a five-barrel one.1 A half-barrel is fifteen and a half gallons, roughly a home-brew rig with a commercial licence attached, which is why the early beer was taproom-only. The menu now is doing more than a brewpub menu usually does. There is a Detroit-style build on a thick airy crust with the caramelized cheese edge, at US$20, and there are hand-tossed New York rounds at twelve inches for US$13 and sixteen for US$22, and there is a ten-inch gluten-free base at US$18.3 Those are three separate dough programs, wanting different hydration, different proofs and different heat, at one counter. The rest of the board is built for sharing: Brewer's Fries under beer cheese, smoked BBQ pulled pork, red onion and serrano at US$11, two colossal buffalo rolls stuffed with grilled chicken and mozzarella at US$10, garlic knots at US$9. The specialty twelve-inchers run to a Superbird with BBQ sauce, chicken, bacon and banana peppers and a Thunderbird on a ranch base.3 No independent source has assessed any of it.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Detroit, then Brewer's Fries for the table. That pairing shows the pan bake and the kitchen's own smoker in one sitting.3
• Drink: the Monkey Wrench Wheat IPA. It is the lower-alcohol version of the Funky Monkey and the Statesman's beer writer says the lighter body makes the hops read louder, not quieter.1 That is the physics of it: less residual sweetness and less body means less to mask the polyphenols.
• Or take the taster flight, which the brewery gives free to first-timers so you can pick a pint off it.1
• Avoid: treating the gluten-free crust as a safe option. The venue's own menu says the kitchen is not gluten-free and cross-contact may occur.3

What locals & experts say

• Arianna Auber in the Austin American-Statesman, verbatim, picking a favorite: Still others, like me, prefer the Monkey Wrench Wheat IPA, a lower-in-alcohol version of the Funky Monkey. She reports that Plummer's own pick is the Monkey Tail Pale Ale and that the two the taproom orders most are the Funky Monkey IPA and the Cheeky Monkey Summer Session Wheat.1
• Plummer on the Cheeky Monkey, verbatim: Every group that comes in has someone who hates hops, who just doesn't care for that kind of flavor, so we made Cheeky Monkey as a summer session wheat for them. He adds that it takes some explanation because it's not like Blue Moon or a hefeweizen or anything. It's a summer-day lawnmower beer. Super light. Super easy to drink.1
• The coverage is nine years old and describes a different building. Auber's piece places the brewery at 1032 Canyon Bend Dr; the venue now trades at 12024 US 290. Take the beer names and the brewer's record from it and nothing operational.1
• Eric Puga's Austin Chronicle brewery power rankings scored twenty-five Austin breweries in 2024 and twenty-five in 2023, and Suds Monkey is in neither list.2 No published review of the food exists either.
• I haven't found a review of the beer or the food. The one brewery profile in circulation is a house byline on craftbeeraustin.com, and nothing here rests on it.
• The one warning worth quoting is the venue's own, on the gluten-free base: while we offer a gluten-free crust, our kitchen is not gluten-free, and cross-contact may occur.3

Good to know

• Price: pizzas from US$13, the sixteen-inch at US$22, the Detroit at US$20, sides between US$8 and US$12.3
• Where it actually is: the name says Dripping Springs and the postal address is Austin 78737, on US 290 west.3
• Hygiene: no inspection record for this business. The silence is not about jurisdiction, which is missing data rather than a finding.4
• Hours: not on the menu page.
• Getting there: US 290 west, past Oak Hill on the Dripping Springs run.

Verdict

could-visit — The rung was re-stated on 8 August 2026 with the beer in it. Greg Plummer brewed at Big Buck in Michigan and at Stone in California before opening this with Steve Gray, and the house beers are Monkey Tail Pale Ale, Funky Monkey IPA, Cheeky Monkey Summer Session Wheat, Monkey Wrench Wheat IPA and Punk Monkey Porter. The Statesman's Arianna Auber prefers the Monkey Wrench. A family brewpub on the US 290 stretch out toward Dripping Springs whose kitchen is running three dough programs at once: a Detroit pan bake with caramelized cheese edges at twenty dollars, hand-tossed New York rounds at twelve and sixteen inches, and a gluten-free base the venue warns is made in a kitchen that is not gluten-free. The fries come under beer cheese and smoked pulled pork for eleven dollars. It sits mid-ladder because every word of that is the operator's own menu, no independent source has assessed the pizza or the beer, and Austin Public Health holds no inspection row for a business on a block it demonstrably inspects.