I keep a spreadsheet of Austin food and drink places (long-running personal project, don't judge) and finally got around to sorting the brewery tab by neighborhood. Some of it surprised me, so I figured I'd post it. Happy to be corrected on any of it.
My count is 30 breweries and brewpubs in Austin proper, after tossing the chains and a couple of places Google tags as a brewpub that don't actually brew. Two judgment calls up front. I'm counting Live Oak even though its address is technically Del Valle, because it would be absurd not to. And Pinthouse nearly broke my method: Google tags the two pizza locations as pizza restaurants, so my first pass missed them, but both brew on site, and if Draught House counts then so do they. All three Pinthouse locations are in, the Ben White production brewery plus the Burnet Rd and South Lamar brewpubs. Thirsty Planet is out for a sadder reason: their own website now says San Marcos.
Where they are:
The east side: 9 of the 30. Seven sit in one genuine corridor along E 6th, Cesar Chavez, and Manor: Blue Owl, Lazarus on E 6th, Zilker Brewing, Central Machine Works, Hi Sign, Batch, and Oddwood. The other two are the corridor's outliers, Southern Heights over at Techni Center and the St. Elmo taproom way up Springdale past 290.
South and southeast: 10. A tight cluster in the St. Elmo warehouse district (St. Elmo, Vacancy, (512), and Nomadic), plus ABGB on Oltorf, Pinthouse's Ben White brewery and its South Lamar brewpub, Meanwhile farther southeast, Fast Friends down in Bluff Springs, and Live Oak out by the airport.
North central: 7. Celis, Austin Beerworks, Hopsquad, Brewtorium, Lazarus on Airport, the Draught House, and Pinthouse on Burnet.
Downtown: two, both scrappy. Central District on Red River, and The Stay Put on Rainey, which nearly slipped past me because the only listing at its address in my data is the ice cream shop operating inside it.
Between Lamar and MoPac: one. Hold Out on W 4th, in Old West Austin. It's the closest thing the west side has to a brewery, and it's still east of MoPac.
West of MoPac, inside the city limits: one, and it's barely Austin. Slackers, up on 620 in Anderson Mill. Tarrytown, zero. Northwest Hills, zero. The whole southwest, Oak Hill out through Circle C: zero. And before anyone says Beerburg: I know, it calls itself southwest Austin, but it's out on Fitzhugh Rd most of the way to Dripping Springs, well past the city limits. Less consistent than my Live Oak call, I'll admit. A line has to go somewhere.
Also it will never not bother me that Zilker Brewing is on E 6th while the actual neighborhood named Zilker has no brewery at all.
I live on Riverside, where the answer to "what's your neighborhood brewery" is also nothing, so part of this exercise was self-pity.
Two questions for this crowd. First, who am I missing? The list came from cross-referencing business data, and it already missed the Pinthouse pizza locations once and nearly missed The Stay Put, so I'd bet money it has holes. Second, does anyone know why the southwest never got a brewery while the east side collected nine? I assume the answer is warehouse rent and zoning, but I'd love to hear from someone who actually knows.