Editor’s Note: This is part 8 of How To Be Texan, Wherever You Are. It’s an up and coming eBook on how to maintain your Texan ways, no matter where you live. Some of us fortunate souls still live in the Great State and others are Ex-Pats who were forced to leave by marriage, jobs, or circumstance. You all however, have a great heritage and you can still be Texan, Wherever You Are.
Drink up, you’re from Texas!
Texas drinks
Dr Pepper is the coke of choice for most Real Texans. It was invented in Waco, Texas. Some folks pronounce it Wacko, Texas.
A very common exchange goes like this:
“Wanna coke?”
“Yeah.”
What kind?
“Dr Pepper.”
Authentic Dr pepper is made in Dublin, Texas from pure cane sugar. Up until very recently, you could still buy it from the Dublin bottling plant and a good Texan CAN taste the difference. The Dr Pepper brand is owned by Snapple and there has been a flap recently about closing the Dublin Bottling Plant or not offering the original product there. I don’t know what has actually been resolved, but I did see a large display of original Dublin Dr Pepper at Central Market not long ago.
In the alcohol section of Real Texas drinks, Lone Star beer IS the National Beer of Texas, but you have to be tough 
enough to drink it. Pearl beer, made from liquids unknown, was another longtime favorite of serious Texas beer drinkers, but only the strong forefathers of beer drinking could consume it and live to tell about it.
And, there are a few of us left who used to drink 25 cent Coronas in a place just south of Del Rio.
There are several breweries or made in Texas beers available.
I grew up on Lone Star, but switched over to Coors at an early age. For a long time, Coors was not available statewide and we were about the farthermost western town that had Coors. College boys would come to our town, get a pickup load of Coors and re-sell it in Austin-San Marcos for a profit. Some made a good living as modern day bootleggers.
Today, Coors and Miller are owned by the same company and Miller is brewed in Fort Worth. It is called MillerCoors.com
Their top selling beers are Miller Lite and Coors Light. Other brands include Blue Moon Belgian White, Coors Banquet, Foster’s, Henry Weinhard’s, Icehouse, Keystone Premium, Leinenkugel’s, Killian’s Irish Red, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller High Life, Milwaukee’s Best, Molson Canadian, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Pilsner Urquell, Red Dog and many more. I am not sophisticated enough to know what some of the brands listed above are except Miller and Coors, Keystone, Fosters and Blue Moon.
Alas, Lone Star, The National Beer of Texas, is owned by Pabst Brewing Company, and it is brewed in Fort Worth by Miller Brewing Company. Lone Star has a colorful history and the brewing is actually outsourced to Miller Brewing Company in Fort Worth. The old Lone Star Brewing Company San Antonio 
headquarters is being remodeled by a private developer and will be a great place to visit in the near future.
Lone Star: The beer that made armadillos famous!
Spoetzl Brewing Company which serves up the ever popular Shiner Beer is brewed in Texas and always has been. Shiner Bock is available in over 41 states now. It was started in 1909 and is the oldest independent brewery in Texas.
Shiner Beer was successful because it kept its production small and local. After prohibition ended, many of the larger breweries came to Texas. Shiner struggled, but kept its distribution to within 70 miles of Shiner, Texas.
It has grown and prospered and is now the 10th largest brewery in the U.S. Like Lone Star, it has an almost cult like following.
There are many other Made in Texas beers including Shiner along with Southern Star, Real Ale, Saint Arnold, and Independence Brewing Company. Those are all Real Texas beers and you can work your way through all of them if you are really thirsty.
Here is another listing of breweries in Texas:
- Adelbert’s Brewery – Austin, Texas.
- Austin Beerworks – Austin, Texas.
- Wicked Beaver Brewery – Lubbock, Texas.
- (512) Brewing Company – Austin, Texas.
- Franconia Brewing Company – McKinney, Texas.
- Fredericksburg Brewing Company – Fredericksburg, Texas.
- Freetail Brewing Company – San Antonio, Texas.
- Independence Brewing Company – Austin, Texas.
- Jester King Craft Brewery – Austin, Texas.
- Live Oak Brewing Company – Austin, Texas.
- New Republic Brewing Company – College Station, Texas.
- Rahr and Sons Brewing Company – Fort Worth, Texas.
- Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling – San Antonio, Texas.
- Real Ale Brewing Company – Blanco, Texas.
- Saint Arnold – Houston, Texas .
- Southern Star Brewing Company – Conroe, Texas.
- Spoetzl Brewery – Shiner, Texas Commonly referred to as Shiner. Most known for their beer, Shiner Bock.
- Thirsty Planet Brewing – Austin, Texas.
- Twisted X Brewing Company – Tex Mex Beer – Cedar Park, Texas.
- Circle Brewing Company- Austin, Texas.
- No Label Brewing Co. – Katy, Texas.
- Karbach Brewing Co. – Houston, Texas.
- Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co. – Houston, Texas.
Margarita’s are a Texas favorite
The other alcoholic drink worthy of mention if you are a good Texan is the Margarita. There are several claims of where the original margarita was first introduced to a thirsty Texas, but one is the following: In Galveston, Texas, head bartender Santos Cruz created the Margarita for singer Peggy (Margaret) Lee in 1948 in Galveston’s Balinese Room.
The Balinese Room was Texas’ finest nightclub with A/C, casino gambling, superb food and drinks, and stellar entertainment until the Texas Rangers finally shut it down in 1957. The last remnants of the infamous Balinese room were wiped out by Hurricane Ike.
Here is one of my favorite Peggy Lee songs.
Made in Texas Vodka
And Vodka aficionados can sip on Texas made Tito’s Vodka, Dripping Springs Vodka, Savvy, or Enchanted Rock Vodka. All make pretty good Dirty Martinis if that is your form of poison.
Don’t forget Ice Tea!
And for you teetotalers……There’s one more. Ice tea. Or, iced tea. It is actually true that you don’t have to consume prodigious amounts of alcoholic beverages to have a good time in Texas. Although I sing and dance much better after having my fair share!
When we order tea, it comes with ice cubes in it and you can get it already sweet. We drink ice tea winter and summer and in prodigious amounts during the summer. We go to bed with a glass of it beside the bed in case we get thirsty during the night. You can imagine my surprise in New York when asked by the waiter what my drink preference was…..I answered ice tea……and was brought….hot tea.
We take our drinks seriously in Texas from Dr Pepper to your favorite version of Margaritas to ice tea.
By the way…it’s not a typo. There is no period in Dr Pepper.
You can be Texan Wherever You Are by toasting your friends with your Texas favorite.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
The Clifton Bottling Works lost its rights to make, bottle, and sell Dr Pepper in mid-January after they settled a licensing lawsuit with Plano based Dr Pepper Snapple group and selling its franchise to the corporation. It was at that time the only place where Dr Pepper was made with pure cane sugar.
In this morning’s Waco Tribune-Herald there is an article which says that the Clifton Bottling Works has now lost the right to sell a second Waco-born soft drink: Big Red. Big Red was also made with pure cane sugar at the Clifton plant.
Dublin’s now most recognizable brand is now Triple X root beer.
I love this information. We can base a tour all around the different breweries…which we had been planning to do starting with Shiner, Texas. No…we don’t have a drinking problem:) I was surprised to see all the names of beers that MillerCoors brews. Very interesting.
@Warthog…I didn’t realize that Big Red was a Texas drink. I love that drink.
Another great article.
And….Vickie and Warthog, I didn’t even get into Texas wines simply because I don’t know much about them. I do know they have some fantastic winery tours each year in the Fredericksburg area. Any sophisticated Real Texas winos out there?
It is long history now, but back in the 1950’s, the number one selling beer in Texas was Grand Prize. I remember it because, 1) Some members of my family were the reason it was Texas’ best selling beer, and 2) we had an old metal Grand Prize ice chest, which would probably be worth a few hundred bucks, if it were still around.
Also, Schlitz, the beer that made Milwakee famous actually had a brewery in Longview, TX in the 1970s. Stroh’s (another Yankee beer) bought them out, and I think now the brewery stands empty.
I was just recently “educated” to the number of wineries here in Texas. In this small town where we are currently, there is a marvelous “Purveyer of all things fine & funky” called The Rancher’s Daughter. She has devoted one long wall to all the wines of Texas. Old Montgomery has three wineries…plus a wolf sanctuary. I often wonder why people ever leave Texas.
I’ll be watching for the wineries article.
I knew I should not be making comments at such an early hour. It was a little after 6 this morning when I kept using the word Clifton for Dublin. To get it right, it is the Dublin Bottling Works, not the Clifton Bottling Works and it is located in Dublin Texas.
Sorry about that.
On other matters, recently the magazine TEXAS HIGHWAYS has had a number of articles on winerys and Texas wines, located all over the state. Some of the best are on the high plains and also in the LLano and Buchanan Dam area.
If you research far enough back, you will probably find in that magazine anything you want to know about Texas breweries and distilleries. Good magazine for you Texas travelers, also.
It pains me greatly but Dr Pepper is forever off my list since the grand poobahs of Snapple finally prevailed.
Now Big Red? Is there nothing sacred?
Being a sixth generation Texan I grew up drinking Dr Pepper and when old enough began drinking Lone Star longnecks. My Dad’s company sold Pearl. So I am familar. I use to love going to the Lone Star Brewery in S. A. and visiting the old Buckhorn Saloon
I will never drink another Dr Pepper unless it is an original
made in Dublin, Texas
its 10 2 & 4
I think the Dublin Dr Pepper plant is closed, but the one in Temple still makes Dr Pepper with cane sugar, and I believe there may be a couple of others, but the main one is in Temple.
My grandmother had a Dr Pepper clock in her living room with I was little.
I used to drink dr pepper and the lone star slightly chilled but not cold.my late dad said the chill savored the taste while the cold did not.things have changed a lot since then.nowadays Ican’t even go near either though can smell them.
I hear ya Bob…..things have changed a lot including my first choice of beverages. Nowdays ice tea seems to be the first thing on my list.
Enjoying an ice cold Lone Star with a lit pit this fine evening.
I plan to make a trip to Austin and was checking out what non-alcoholic, diet beverages I would find (I’m diabetic with a wonky pancreas). And was happy to find that Dr Pepper (which I already knew was made in Texas) and Big Red was available in diet form. I love ice tea but not sweet tea (sugar, sigh). My drink of choice is very watered down die ginger ale over ice. But I don’t think I have to worry. Now if I can only find a virgin margarita at the University of Texas Austin.
Heard about something they drink in South Texas. It’s called sotaw. Have no idea how to spell it so I guessed. What is it? Where do I get it? Been away from Texas way to long and I need to get back.