Where to Find Great Craft Breweries in Austin
Austin, Texas — updated August 24, 2026
Austin's breweries run from a Hill Country farmhouse operation on Fitzhugh Road to East 6th taprooms that pour coffee before they pour beer. Here's where the ratings hold up under real volume, with hours and what each place is set up to do.
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Austin's brewery map stretches from a Hill Country property on Fitzhugh Road out past Dripping Springs to a cluster of taprooms on East 6th, with a northern pocket around Kramer Lane and Industrial Terrace. Several of these places open at 7:30 or 8 in the morning and serve coffee first, which is not how brewery towns usually work. The list below is ordered by how convincingly each one answers the question, with review volume treated as evidence: a high rating across thousands of reviews is settled, a high rating across a few hundred is still forming.
1. Pinthouse Pizza
The strongest combination of rating and volume on this list: 4.7 across more than 3,200 reviews, which is about as settled as a score gets in Austin. The Burnet Road location pairs its own beer with handcrafted sourdough pizzas, sandwiches, burgers, wings, shareables and salads, all made in-house daily. Lunch specials run Monday through Friday, 11am to 3pm, and the kitchen and bar also flag a 3pm to 6pm weekday window for a beer and a bite. It functions as a full restaurant rather than a taproom with a food truck parked outside, so it handles groups and weeknight dinners without much friction.
2. Jester King Brewery
More reviews than anything else here, over 3,600 of them, holding a 4.6. The draw is the Fitzhugh Road setting southwest of town, plus wood-fired pizza, food trucks and beer to go. Open seven days: Monday through Thursday 2pm to 8pm, Friday 2pm to 9pm, Saturday 11am to 9pm and Sunday 11am to 8pm. Weekday afternoons are the only time it opens before 11, so an early Saturday arrival is the move if you want space. The brewery also runs a live calendar of events and ticketed nights, worth checking before driving out.
3. Lazarus Brewing Co. East 6th
A 4.7 across nearly 2,500 reviews, and the most useful hours in this guide. The East 6th taproom opens at 7:30am Monday through Friday and 8am on weekends, closing at 10pm early in the week and 11pm Thursday through Saturday. That range makes it a coffee stop, a lunch spot and a late East Side beer in the same building. There is a full breakfast, lunch and dinner menu, wine, and a happy hour menu that also applies at the second taproom. Street parking on East 6th is the usual constraint.
4. Meanwhile Brewing
The highest-rated of the larger southeast taprooms, 4.7 across more than 1,200 reviews. It opens at 8am on weekdays and 9am on weekends, closing at 10pm early in the week, 11pm Friday and Saturday, and earlier on Sunday. The Promontory Point Drive site leans into that early schedule with coffee drinks, including seasonal matcha and cappuccino specials, so it draws a morning crowd before the beer crowd arrives. Its size makes it one of the easier places in Austin to land a table with a group on a Saturday afternoon.
5. The Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co.
South Austin's Oltorf Street standby, 4.6 across nearly 1,500 reviews, and the only entry here with a hard closure to plan around: it is closed Mondays. Doors open at 11:30am Tuesday through Friday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday. The food menu is built for sharing, with cheese and meat plates, pimiento cheese and chips, deviled eggs and stuffed peppadews, and there is a Taco Tuesday and a happy hour with pint and pitcher specials. Photos from the venue show a dance floor, so expect nights when it is more social club than quiet pint.
6. Austin Beerworks
The original Industrial Terrace tap room in north Austin, 4.6 across more than 1,000 reviews. Hours are 11am to 10pm Monday through Saturday and 11am to 8pm Sunday, with food from rotating trucks; the brewery has pointed to conchas and masa corn dogs among what turns up. Beerworks also runs a second, separate site on Springdale Road with shorter evening hours, so confirm which address you are heading to before you go. The Industrial Terrace room is the older of the two and the one behind this rating.
7. Zilker Brewing Company and Taproom
A 4.7 on East 6th, though on a smaller base than Lazarus down the street: 826 reviews, enough to trust but not the deepest sample here. Open daily, 11am to 10pm Monday through Thursday, until 11pm Friday and Saturday, and to 9pm Sunday, with happy hour Monday through Thursday from 3pm to 6pm. Parks & Rec, the bright citrusy pale, is the flagship, and the taproom rotates one-off brews alongside cocktails, wine and non-alcoholic options. Its position on East 6th makes it a natural first or last stop on a walking route.
8. Hopsquad Brewing Co
The thinnest evidence of the group, a 4.5 from 357 reviews, so treat the score as promising rather than proven. What earns it a place is programming: the Kramer Lane taproom hosts ticketed comedy nights and opens early for televised soccer, including morning kickoffs, with coffee and early-hours drink specials to match. Reservations are accepted and there is a food menu. The published hours have shifted enough that the brewery's own site tells visitors to check Google before coming, which is worth doing rather than assuming a Tuesday afternoon opening.