The Brew Crew

Brock Wagner has a long history with beer. In fact, it starts before he was born. His great-great-great grandfather came from Alsace in the mid-1800's and opened Wagner's Beer Hall in San Francisco (now the oldest existing bar in the city, renamed The Saloon.) Brock grew up in Cincinnati and Brussels, both big brewing towns, where he was exposed to many of the beer styles of the world. Then in college at Rice University, fate (and a friend) introduced him to homebrewing. This love of beer and brewing was what eventually led him to the inevitable: opening a microbrewery.

Brock develops the recipes for the Saint Arnold beers based on his own homebrewing experience coupled with a desire to create world class beers for local tastes. His preference is for beers with rich malty, creamy flavors and no shortage of hops. Brock also revived the old tradition of cask ales, a style of beer not seen distributed in Texas since probably prior to Prohibition. Several of the Saint Arnold beers have won awards, including from the Great American Beer Festival, the World Beer Cup, the Real Ale Festival, the Colorado State Fair and the World Beer Championships.

Prior to starting the brewery, Brock spent six years in investment banking working on corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions projects totaling more than $4 billion. Brock graduated from Rice University in 1987 with a BA in Economics. Brock is married to a cool wife (she lets him go to work to make beer) and has two beautiful, intelligent children.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in January 1998.

Interview Process: Frank used to be the volunteer that picked up donated kegs from the brewery to deliver to KPFT events. He was known to be one of our biggest promoters around town. When our sales position in Austin became available, he seemed the perfect fit. He loves live music and Saint Arnold beer, so when he's out selling, he is never sure if he is working or playing.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in November 2002.

Interview Process: Another frequent tourist, Vince kept showing up on Saturday tours, telling us about being an outlaw homebrewer and doing his best to look the part. After several years, we decided he was sincere. He now brews here and we discovered that the whole outlaw thing was a fac§ade. H's actually as cuddly as a teddy bear. He also chooses good names for his children.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in September 1996 to May 2002. Joined again in March 2003.

Interview Process: James began as a tour regular, then offered to paint a large mural of St. Arnold on the wall behind the bar. The incentive for him: he got to enjoy the fruits of our taps while painting (his girlfriend did, too). Soon after he completed the fine work, we had an opening for someone to run our old finicky bottling line. James spent the next five years greasy and sweaty, but the bottling line ran well. Then he brewed for a year. Then he decided to do something else. Then he realized he was kooky for leaving. He came back and now sells our beer.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in April 2004.

Interview Process: Kendra is another example of persistence. While living in Austin, Kendra came to love her Saint Arnold beers. Then she moved to DFW where she was inexplicably selling things like Orange Pineapple Bahama Mama. It turns out the only reason she was selling these other beverages was because we had not yet asked her to sell Saint Arnold's. We asked her, and now she gets to sell what she is passionate about.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in July 2004

Interview Process: Many members of the St. Arnold Army were already familiar with Ann as they had ordered their Aeros tickets from her each year for our big St. Arnold/Aeros party. But after Ann got into a fight and took out the Aeros goalie, she had to find other employment. Fortunately, we needed a customer service/office manager/graphics artist/eager beer drinker and Ann fit the bill.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company April 2005

Interview Process: Pedro arrived through the gift of nepotism as his brother Juan was working here and we needed another person for the bottling line. Pedro ended up outlasting his younger brother here though.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in December 2005

Interview Process:  When we began the search for a bookkeeper, that was what we thought we wanted.  Then we met John and realized he was what we really needed.  Now we can look at numbers and learn all sorts of interesting things, like how little money we make on root beer!  And, of course, honesty is important when handling funds at a company so we gave John the ultimate test:  we left the room with a bottle of Divine Reserve in front of him and it was still there when we returned.  He passed!

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company June 2006

Interview Process: Another fine example of persistence winning out!  Michael kept telling us how much he wanted to work here, plus he had a good reference from Matt “The Viking” Thrall who interned here.  When the opening finally appeared, Michael pounced on it.

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in June 2006

Interview Process:  After talking about all the normal interview stuff, Justin pulled out the pictures of his Miata.  After seeing that he could fit a small block Chevy engine into a Miata, we figured that he would be able to fix anything at the brewery that we might be able to throw at him.  And we started throwing things at him right away!

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company July 2006

Interview Process:  Sam dropped off about 5 copies of his resume but then to make sure we noticed, he brought by samples of his homebrew.  Aaaah, the way to our heart.  Plus after 5 years with Nabisco he realized that beers and Oreos just don’t work together.

Samuel Espinoza
Bottling Team

Interview Process: Samuel came to us via the old switcheroo move. We interviewed and hired one person, but it turned out that those "papers" that person had were perhaps printed at the flea market, not by the official government agency as claimed. Thus Samuel showed up as his replacement and turned out to be everything we had hoped for!

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company January 2007

Interview Process: First Lennie emailed from Beaumont during ad breaks in the evening news where he was the sports anchor. He really wanted to work at a microbrewery. Then Lennie came to pub crawls and events at the brewery to make it seem like he really wanted to work at a microbrewery. But it was when Brock saw Lennie at the GABF handing out koozies with his phone number on them to other breweries that Brock realized how badly Lennie wanted to work at a microbrewery.

Bobby Mullins
Brewer

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company June 2007

Bobby was studying filmmaking while homebrewing on weekends. As delivering homebrews to impress us on an interview had already been done, he chose a different route: film the St. Arnold Polka video! Thus was born our co-worker version of the video and Bobby got a job (making beer, not filming it.)

Allen Landon
Brewer

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company June 2007

Allen moved to Portland because it was a craft brewing Mecca and he knew he wanted to make beer. But instead he fought forest fires. Plus he decided brewing in a temperate climate wouldn't be a craft. So he returned to Houston, bribed a friend working here to put in a good word for him and was hired!

Phil Dagger
Bottling Line Team Leader

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company November 2007

Interview Process:  First we discovered that his real name was Melvin Finkelstein but he changed it for his career in movies.  He still survived our rigorous interviewing regimen.  Plus he had a good plug from a devoted volunteer.

Chris Inman
Brewing Production

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company in November 2007

Interview Process:  Chris happened to walk in one day asking about job opportunities.  We had the perfect opening, had him change shoes and marched him out onto the production floor. 

Kathy Colwell
Receptionist/Office Manager

Joined Saint Arnold Brewing Company January 2008

Interview Process:  Kathy seemed more organized than the rest of us which helped move her up in a large field of candidates.  But what really did it for us is when she informed us that she (not her husband) had a beer fridge.  Hired!

Interview Process: At first, Joel just attended the tours like other members of the Army. But slowly, the St. Arnold spell drew him in. Actually, we put something into his beer (more beer) after we discovered what he could do on the web. You see, he knew what PPP, DNS, and USB was. We, of course, did not. We did know what an IPA and an ESB were. This was reward enough for Joel. Now he maintains our website, finds cool ways for us to efficiently send out our emails and frequently bails us out when error messages like "PC Load Letter" show up.

In 641, the citizens of Metz requested that Saint Arnold's body be exhumed and ceremoniously carried to Metz for reburial in their Church of the Holy Apostles. During this voyage a miracle came to pass in the town of Champignuelles. The tired porters and followers stopped for a rest and walked into a tavern for a drink of their favorite beverage. Regretfully, there was only one mug of beer to be shared, but that mug never ran dry and all of the thirsty pilgrims were satisfied.

Saint Arnold is recognized by the Catholic Church as the Patron Saint of Brewers. Read more...

Saint Arnold proselytizers, truly worthy of sainthood...