Last week I had the local fortune of attending Revolver Brewing‘s release party for its new High Brass American Blonde Ale at Fort Worth’s Central Market location.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock located very far from Texas, you’ve heard the myth spreading about Revolver’s Blood and Honey–the beer that sounds like a Mike’s Hard Lemonade flavor and has more kick than Your Favorite IPA. The Revolver guys will be quick to remind you that they have other beers, too, but Blood and Honey is their bread and butter, so to speak. A summery beer you crave on winter nights, an unabashedly fruit-inspired brew that no dude will be ashamed of drinking. It’s been a runaway hit that has the Granbury-based brewer scrambling to expand their brewing capacity.

When I heard they were releasing a new beer that has the popularity/drinkability potential of an American Blonde, I knew I had to be there. The 98-degree temperatures at 7 PM weren’t going to stop me. I had to be one of the first of DFW’s increasingly-beer-crazy-population to try Revolver’s latest.

The heat didn’t deter anyone else, either. The line was crazy-long and pints of Blood and Honey, Bock, and High Brass were flying off the bar. When I finally got to break my Benjamin at the cash-only popup bar like a true asshole, I greedily grabbed my glass and casually cruised the crowd, sipping like I wasn’t drinking alone with a nerdy focus on beer.

With no open seats to be found I walked the crowd and noticed immediately that this was another devilish drink from head brewmaster Grant Wood and his team. Less specifically-flavored than Blood and Honey, High Brass lives up to its name as a crisp, drinkable ale. Confirmation bias had me picking up notes of polished brass among the restrained hops and classy citrus tingle; the absurd evening heat had me feeling turnt toward the bottom of my first round.

Nothing has changed, then. High Brass drinks like any American Blonde Ale, but it packs a stealthy 6.0% ABV that, like it’s popular big brother B n H, is thoroughly undetectable. Don’t take that the wrong way–if I wanted a six pack that I could drink more than two of when the mercury is up high, this would be near the top of the list. Forget Pink Panty Droppers and Jungle Juice–offer ’em a fancy craft beer in a bottle and watch chaos ensue.

Revolver Brewing is a truly Texan venture, with Wood’s exuberant return from an extended stint with Boston’s Sam Adams evident in every high-caliber, easy-drinkin’ beer they release. On a visit to the pastoral brewery last January, I got to wander the Edenically-blood orange-scented brewery and pick his brain on a non-tour day.

Sam Adams would never go for shenanigans like high-po brews masquerading as fruity, Ales named after antiquated weaponry or Stouts after controversial deep-drilling techniques (looking at you, Mother’s Little Fracker).

The freedom of expression afforded by trusting investors and a humbly talented team embodies the Texan spirit and all of its self-fulfilling clichés. Live bands, big beards, and lots of cornhole and cowboy boots take care of the rest.

Don’t mess with it, Everything’s bigger, something like that.

Returning to your hometown is rarely the kind of thing you want to do. Unless it’s for Thanksgiving, Christmas, a debutante party you’re too old to go to, or a wedding your friend is too young to be having. For some, LA is so blasé that only San Fran or Brooklyn will do. For others, they simply have to escape that parochial backwater they grew up in, the giant sprawling American breadbasket town that’s not close to a coast. They’ll be celebrated when they reach their urban-enlightened Nirvana as one of the brave souls who escaped that Puritanical Vice Grip, the Boys Who Lived.

Then there are those who take matters into their own hands. It’s not a move they need, it’s a new place for like-minded alternative thinkers to commiserate amongst the tucked-in shirts and pickup trucks.

These places strike me as the true coffee meccas—moustachioed but unpretentious, tattooed but not terrifying. You may be next to an oil tycoon in blue jeans or in line behind an agrarian emperor dressed in the style of his great grandfather. Or maybe you’re sitting outside in the Sacramento heat reading a book and drinking the best cortado you’ve ever had.

Such is the case when I stop by Sacramento’s Temple Coffee, undoubtedly one of the top three roasters I’ve ever experienced. Rather than run for the supersaturated nerve center of the Bay Area or the southern frontier in Los Angeles, the fine folks in Sacramento decided to join in the bleeding edge of new-cool that’s pervading the forgotten capital city. All the best produce is lurking just down the highway, so why isn’t all the best food being made here? All the best coffee?

Now it is. I look forward to my Lake Tahoe trips more for the stop Sac City than I do to risking my cruciate ligaments on the snowy slopes. It’s not being done with the drive that gets me irritable, it’s holding off on my coffee binge until we reach 9^th and J so I can order everything at once and my buddy can order everything else and we can sample coffees and espressos until it hurts.

 

But I digress.

Sacramento is not the hometown I never meant to go back to, but it has a lot of the same traits. It’s an underdog, a part of the God-forsaken ‘flyover zone’ because it’s a full two hours from the coast, a dusty farm town full of politicians who fly their jets to mansions in LA or SF at every chance they get. Still, the people who live there are proud and want to make it a place you’d never want to leave. And it starts by roasting some of the best coffee extant.

* * *

For me, home is the place that didn’t even have a true craft coffee shop when I grew up there. The first one opened the same year I left, moved away for the promise of coastal enlightenment and something happening. At first its roasts were erratic and its sourcing seemed to be more of the Birkenstock-feel-good-fair-trade vibe than the quality-at-all-costs one. I’d come home and guzzle a coffee before one of the endless deb balls, glad it wasn’t Starbucks and glad my cummerbund-less tux wasn’t under scrutiny from the open-minded crowd.

I was sad the street that was shaping up to be bike-friendly and stickerbombed and bearded wasn’t there when I was, but glad it was there for future mes.

Fast forward a few years and the mysterious magnetism Texas exerts on its natives has worked its magic on me. You look up one day and realize that the whole world seemingly conspired to put you in this position, back where it all started in spite of every last odd and seventeen-year-old-proclamation.

So where is a work-from-anywhere-aspiring-writer to go?

* * *

Back at Avoca, the same coffee shop that some years ago was the serviceable fuel station for a misfit introvert slated to go socialize with the west side’s high society, I spy Chemexes on the bar and notneutral ceramics on the La Marzocco esperesso machine. They’re not messing around. They even list cortados on their menu, my secret espresso guilty pleasure that is usually the kind of thing you have to secretly request from the cool barista.

I order one and take my seat, smug that I now have joined the mysterious mass of people who seems to be getting paid for doing nothing at coffee shops all day and relieved that I don’t have to wear circulation-inhibiting jeans to fit in while doing it. Maybe everything really is bigger in Texas, because that is one fashion trend I never could get into… The barista looks a lot like the ones I knew in LA, but he walks over to me with my cortado and sets it on my table.

“With a heart on it, because I love you.”

 

Texas isn’t so bad after all.

It might seem a tenuous connection to string Temple and Avoca together, but stay with me here. These are two coffee shops that are participating in the homegrown foodie renaissance in their respective cities, that offer a great product with none of that insufferable pride that typically accompanies it.

I’ve now spent many hours of most days at one of the cozy booth-tables, nodding at familiar faces and getting consistently blown away by the espressos and coffees alike. There’s always something roasting in the adjacent room. Between retail and wholesale accounts, they sell a lot of coffee for a place where it’s 100 degrees three months out of the year.

I took home a bag their El Salvador ‘Lorena’ after being surprised by the price tag they had on it. Most of their roasts are priced substantially lower than they might be out west, but they finally drink like bargains rather than ‘you get what you pay for’ budget options. Still, they were commanding Geisha-like prices for an El Salvador…

The next day I didn’t go to Avoca just so I could brew the Lorena in my Kalita Wave. I miraculously nail it the first go ‘round and it is by far the best El Salvadorian coffee I’ve ever tasted. A region known for its consistent inoffensive offerings is wowing me with absurdly rich ‘coffee’ aroma and taste, like the finest Central American turned up to eleven. It’s smooth, a bit chocolatey, some cherry, some pear. Unlike many craft coffees, it still tastes like coffee, but I mean that in the best way possible. It’s a revelation. It was so good I decided to brew another cup and make an indulgent breakfast of oatmeal pancakes to go with it.

After all these years, my little hometown coffee roaster/shop has put out a coffee that made me rethink an entire country’s offerings.

Not so bad for a guy who’s been rendered indifferent by relentless traffic jams and soulless perfection out of so many jaded world-champion baristas and a shop that’s done it without hiring away a championship-winner or flown in an archaic 1923 roaster from some abandoned motel in the Swiss Alps.

I’ve been here enough weeks in a row that I’ve  ve got rapport with all of the killer baristas whose confusion has maybe ended after weeklong attendance bursts separated by semesters and seasons. The undying friendliness and ebb and flow of familiar faces makes for a lovely way to work the day away.

I may not be long for the Fort, but I can proudly recommend my hometown roaster to all of my friends who have tired of Intelligentsia and Blue Bottle and Sightglass and Four Barrel. And I know I can always look forward to Christmas and Easter and I probably won’t skip any of those Aggie weddings…