Barrow Brewing Company
Graydon and KD Hill petitioned Salado into a local option election before they could pour anything, then turned a pole barn granary on the creek into a taproom. The Village Idiot is a 9% rye with ginger and herbs in it, and Craft Beer Austin says it packs a punch.
Why go
The Hills started in 2014 with a petition and an election to change the village's laws, and settled on the old Silver Spur Theatre site for what they call Bell County's first microbrewery.2 They spent 2015 converting a pole barn granary and opened to the public on 1 April 2016.2 The knotty pine plank walls are the original ones, and they used to expand and collapse against tons of grain.2
Graydon flew commercially and KD trained soldiers at Fort Hood before this, and the brewing started at home.1 They own the place outright and run it with eight people.1 The building sits on Salado Creek, in the shopping end of town, right off I-35 an hour north of Austin.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Village Idiot, a 9% rye. Craft Beer Austin's warning about it is worth taking at face value.1
- Avoid: a Tuesday drive. The taproom shuts and the room goes to org meetings.3
What locals & experts say
- Craft Beer Austin, brewery profile:
The beers are brewed with the area's farming community in mind. There's nothing too bitter, and nothing too stout.
1 On the 9% rye:It's an extremely good 9% Rye beer that packs a punch.
1 - KD Hill on her husband, to Craft Beer Austin: he
has a hobby he just can't kick.
1
Good to know
- Hours: Sunday 12 to 9, Monday 4 to 9, Tuesday closed, Wednesday and Thursday 4 to 10, Friday 12 to 10:30, Saturday 11 to 10:30.3
- There is a food truck every day and live music at weekends, and no tables are held, so bring a lawn chair for the field by the creek if the room is full.3
- The taproom pours other people's drinks too, local craft beverages beside its own.2
- Dogs are welcome on a leash, and there is a puppy tap left of the front porch.3
- In summer, people put their feet in the creek. The brewery sits right on it.2
Verdict
could-visit — Graydon and KD Hill had to change a village's drinking laws before they could open, then put the brewery in a grain barn on the creek, and that is a better reason to stop in Salado than most towns this size can offer. Irina Plakas tasted the board for Craft Beer Austin and found nothing too bitter and nothing too stout, which is a brewery reading the farming town it sits in, and one 9% rye standing apart from all of it. Her notes are a decade old and nobody has published a newer set, so the beer you actually get is the open question and the room and the creek are not.