Following our semi-regular tradition of taking a long weekend around the holidays, this past winter we took a few days off while visiting San Antonio, Texas. If you’ve followed our travels for any length of time you’ll know that we love a good brewery – or five. So follow along in today’s post covering our craft brewery itinerary while touring downtown San Antonio.
San Antonio Riverwalk
Before diving into our brewery shenanigans, I can’t write a blog about San Antonio without mentioning the historic riverwalk. As this was my first time visiting San Antonio, we made sure to do the entire loop while in town. Even in January, the weather was balmy and allowed us to enjoy our food sitting out on the various patios around town.
Brewery Tour Itinerary
We broke our brewery tour up into three days while visiting San Antonio so that we could spend enough time to enjoy ourselves at each brewery. We found that keeping it to three or less a day worked best – and of course, we walked to the vast majority of our stops. Below you’ll find our routes for each day.
- Day 1: Alamo Beer Company and Vista Brewing. It’s not a visit to San Antonio without a quick stop by the Alamo, which is how we began our first brewery tour day. The Alamo has a rather small footprint and won’t take up too much of your time if you have yet to visit; it was a convenient mid-way point between our hotel and our first brew stop: the Alamo Beer Company.
The Alamo Beer Company is one of the larger breweries in the area with a very large indoor and outdoor seating area, and replete with merchandise for those of you, like us, who like to grab a t-shirt to remember your visits. Across the street (and the train tracks) is a smaller, newer brewery called Vista Brewing in a quaint but tasteful spot in one of the local strip malls. We enjoyed the beer here – and picked up some nice merch, too – but be careful if you order food. We got the cheese and charcuterie board and it was just a very…weird…mix of odd options that didn’t really go well together. - Day 2: Blue Star Brewing Company, Dos Sirenos Brewing Company, and Kuenstler Brewing Company. We started our second day by picking up a ride share to take us to Blue Star Brewing for lunch and a sampler. If you’re a fan of sour beers, this is going to be your favorite stop on your beer tour. We walked down the street to Dos Sirenos Brewing Company next, and enjoyed another sampler and some pints of a wide variety of styles. Be sure to check out their merchandise here, too, for a souvenir – my spouse picked up an amazing beer-themed Hawaiian shirt for our next summer party!
Finally, we landed at the famous Kuenstler Brewing Company for another sampler and handful of pints. Known for their German-style beers, this location is often busy, so plan ahead to make it there during an off-time. Like the previous day, once catching a ride to our first brewery, it was an easy walk to the other two locations. - Day 3: Back Unturned, Idle Beer Hall & Brewery, and Road Map Brewing. It rained on our last day in town but that didn’t stop our brew tour! We caught a ride to our first stop, Back Unturned, and had a delicious breakfast along with our beer flight. Next, we headed down the street to the Idle Beer Hall & Brewery. Idle doesn’t have as big of a selection of their own beers as many of the other breweries we visited, but the beer hall was welcoming and a nice break from the rain. Finally, we ended our tour at Road Map Brewing with a flight and our last t-shirt purchase of the trip. (We quite replenished our wardrobes on this trip!)
All in all, another great extended weekend trip from the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex – especially if you’re craft beer aficionados like we are. If planning a trip to San Antonio, we’d definitely recommend the cooler months – like when we did our trip – to best enjoy the outdoors: both the Riverwalk and the treks between breweries.