Cruise the Craft Brewers

The best North Texas brewery tours to get your weekend beer on

Craft beer is delicious, but it’s even more delicious when you drink it at the source. Fortunately, North Texas breweries are an accommodating bunch and offer tours so you can learn a bit more about your favorite brewery while drinking fresh from the tap.

Some of these breweries are close enough that you can fit in a couple in one day, but there’s no wrong way to do it.

903 Brewers
903 represents Sherman with free tours every Saturday from noon-3 pm. Besides offering the full lineup of beers for sale, 903 usually has a rare brew as well as music and food. If you can’t make it on Saturday, the brewery hosts trivia night every Thursday at 6:30 pm. The tasting room opens at 5:30 pm. Tables fill up, so get there early.

Cedar Creek Brewery
Cedar Creek Brewery in Seven Points keeps the doors open longer than most breweries, offering beers from 4 to 9 pm on Fridays and noon to 9 pm Saturdays. Unlike other breweries, Cedar Creek sells beers individually. Pints are $3; seasonals are $4. You can bring your dog.

Community Beer Company
Community in the Dallas Design District offers a couple of options to try out its beers. There’s the traditional tour for $10 from 2 to 5 pm on Saturdays, complete with food trucks, samples and live music. The brewery also opens up the tap room from 5 to 9 pm on Thursdays and Fridays and 5 to 10 pm on Saturdays after the open house tour.

Deep Ellum Brewing Company
Deep Ellum Brewing sports a strong stable of large batch and seasonals, like the new Oak Cliff Coffee Ale. Tours are Thursdays, 6 to 8:30 pm, and Saturdays, noon to 3 pm. For $10 you get a glass, complimentary beer and a tour. There's live music and a food truck at every tour, so you’ll leave with all senses satisfied. Luckily, being in Deep Ellum means you won’t have to travel far to find the rest of the beers on tap.

FireWheel Brewing Co.
The Rowlett-based FireWheel Brewing Co. has a Texas Pale Ale and a black ale named Midnight Ninja that can sneak up on you. Tours are Saturdays, 11 am to 3 pm, and $10 gets you a pint glass and three samples. The tours are dog- and family-friendly and usually have some food trucks. You’ll also be able to sample some of the small batch and special release beers.

Four Corners Brewing Co.
Four Corners in Trinity Groves knows that free is better, so it offers two free tours at noon and 1 pm on Saturdays. Samples abound, though each tour is limited to 50 people due to the in-depth nature of it. So you have to make a reservation on the website — but still it's free.

Franconia Brewing Co.
There may be a new brewery opening up every month, but Franconia has been doing its thing since 2008, making it one of the oldest in North Texas. Founder Dennis Wehrmann hails from Bavaria and has been involved with brewing since he was 12. This McKinney brewery has Saturday tours, 11 am to 1 pm. The $5 fee includes beer samples.

Lakewood Brewing Company
Lakewood Brewing has made a name for itself with European-styled crafts. The imperial milk stout, lovingly called “The Temptress,” clocks in at 9.1 percent ABV, but you wouldn’t know it. Tours are offered Saturdays from noon to 3 pm, and that includes a souvenir glass, four samples and an informal tour. It’s $10 cash at the door, and they usually wrangle up a food truck or two plus some live music.

Martin House Brewing Company
Fort Worth’s Martin House Brewing Co. is situated right on Trinity Trails, making it perfect for an afternoon of drinking and playing lawn games like cornhole and ladder golf. The brewery offers a tour every Saturday from 2 to 5 pm. For $10 you get a glass, three samples and a tour. The brewery encourages you to bring your own chairs to hang outside with your dogs and family.

Peticolas Brewing Company
Peticolas abstains from canning or bottling its beer, and the marketing plan is practically nonexistent. Still, the brewery has developed a passionate following thanks to award-winning brews including Velvet Hammer and Royal Scandal. The tours are the first and third Saturday of each month from 1 to 3 pm. $10 cash will get you a glass and three beers. Tours are also the only way you can try the new Black Curtains stout.

Rabbit Hole Brewing
The new brewery out of Justin, TX is already offering tours on Saturdays from noon-4 pm. It’s the standard $10 for a pint glass, tour and three samples of their beer, including Mike Modano’s 561 Kolsch-style beer and the Rapture Fusion brown ale.

Rahr & Sons Brewing Co.
When we’re talking North Texas breweries, we are legally required to mention these guys, and for good reason. Around since 2004, Rahr & Sons has been winning awards for nearly as long. Tours are Saturdays, 1-3 pm, but if you can make it to one of the Wednesday tours from 5 to 7:30 pm, you’ll experience a more intimate crowd and experimental and special brews that you can’t get anywhere else. For $10 you get a pint glass and three samples.

Lakewood Brewing's Saturday tours include four samples and a souvenir glass for $10.

Photo by Marc Lee

Lakewood Brewing's Saturday tours include four samples and a souvenir glass for $10.

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Burger News

Family-owned Patty Lou's Smashburgers will open in old downtown Plano

Photo by Sara Aurora Cimminiello on Unsplash

Smashburger

A new restaurant starring a buzzy burger is coming to old downtown Plano: Called Patty Lou's Smashburgers, it will feature the namesake smashburger, and will open at 1004 E. 14th St. #105, in a historic location that was most recently home to a Starbucks.

Patty Lou's is a new concept from Urban Family Concepts, the hospitality company whose other restaurants include Urban Seafood Co., Urban Rio Cantina & Grill, and Italian restaurant Urban Crust, all located in the downtown Plano area.

Patty Lou's is their burger entry, a quick-service spot serving smashburgers, the flattened version of a burger with crisp edges that's been a hot trend for the past year.

According to Urban Family Concepts partner and spokesperson Dana Blaugrund, the restaurant will open in late spring.

Patty Lou's is also a sweet homage to a family member — named for Patty Lou Peters, of "Patty Lou and her Texas Sweethearts" fame, an all-female country & Western / Western swing group founded in the '40s, when female groups were a rarity.

Patty Lou was the mother of Bonnie Shea, who co-founded Urban Family Concepts with her husband Nathan Shea. Infusing the personal touch into everything they do is part of the company DNA, says Urban partner Michael Lee.

"Urban is generally driven by what we like," Lee says. "Urban Rio, our Mexican concept, came about because Bonnie loved that cuisine, and Urban Seafood Company, Nate loves seafood. Burgers are a favorite of their son-in-laws."

Their version of the smashburger will feature American cheese and onions that melt into the meat, Lee says. They'll be served on potato buns, and there'll be some toppings — but they won't go too crazy.

"It'll have onions, lettuce, and pickle, but we're going to stay minimal, with additional toppings on the side," he says. "Going overboard with ingredients can get complicated. Our goal is, very simple burgers that taste very good, at a value price, so that everyone can enjoy coming back and getting a burger."

The menu will also feature smashed chicken burgers, hand-cut French fries skin on, lightly battered onion rings, and milkshakes. They'll also serve alcohol, including bottled beers, wine by the glass, and a signature frozen cocktail. Eventually, they'll add specials like a burger of the month.

The location was originally home to the Ice House, built in 1917, an institution that provided ice products to Plano residents and businesses, says Urban partner Payton Hickey.

"You could pull up and get a block of ice from workers with tongs," Hickey says. "During remodeling, we could still see the raised floor where the freezer was, where they kept the ice."

They operated a licensed location of Starbucks in that space until 2024, when Starbucks opened a store nearby with a drive-thru in the former longtime Jack in the Box at 15th Street and US-75.

Decor at Patty Lou's will embrace a diner feel with counter seating, while incorporating elements from Patty Lou Peter's life, Blaugrund says. (It's a nice coincidence that her name syncs up with "hamburger patty.")

"We'll have her original guitar and some memorabilia in the restaurant — a cool mixture of country music and burger restaurant," Blaugrund says.

burgers openings