Shiner seltzer

Iconic Texas beer brand brews up White Claw seltzer competitor

Shiner straight shooter hard seltzer cans

Look for Straight Shooter on shelves later this month.

Courtesy of Spoetzl Brewery

Add Shiner to the list of beloved Texas brands seeking some of the sweet White Claw cash. The Spoetzl brewery will soon debut Shiner Straight Shooter, a "craft brewed" hard seltzer.

Available by the end of August, Straight Shooter will offer four flavors at launch: Wild Cherry, Lemonade, Mango, and Grapefruit & Lime. The beverage is gluten-free, has zero carbs, and only contains 90 calories per can.

“When we set out to make our first hard seltzer we knew it had to be genuinely craft brewed," Shiner brewmaster Jimmy Mauric said in a statement. "With that in mind, we use just a few simple ingredients and water sourced from our artesian well. We brewed it so it would live up to its name ‘Straight Shooter’— it is a straightforward, transparent, delicious, and refreshing craft brewed hard seltzer.”

Shiner's entrance into the hard seltzer category certainly makes financial sense. Led by White Claw and Truly, the market grew more than 200 percent in 2019, according to data compiled by the IWSR, which tracks global sales of beer, wine, and spirits.

That success has triggered a flood of bubbly competitors. In July, Coca-Cola announced that Topo Chico would bring its own hard seltzer to America in 2021. Global beverage brand Anheuser-Busch InBev now produces three different brands of seltzer.

White Claw proved so popular in 2019 that it experienced a shortage where bars and restaurants couldn't get enough to meet the demand. Consumers like the seltzers because they're easy to drink. Each can typically has less than 5 percent alcohol-by-volume and only contains around a hundred calories.

Whether Straight Shooter will trigger a similar frenzy remains to be seen, but the pairing of an iconic Texas brand with appropriately sweet and tart flavors certainly sounds like a winning combination. Can the days of floating the Frio with a cooler full of Wild Cherry cans be far behind?

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NYT loves AUS

Pastry chef from San Antonio makes New York Times Best Bakeries list

Comadre Panadería/Instagram

Comadre Panadería is known for nostalgic Mexican bakes with feminine flair.

The New York Times has once again shined its spotlight on Austin’s culinary scene. It included Comadre Panadería, an Austin bakery by San Antonio native Mariela Camacho, on its new list of the 22 of the Best Bakeries Across the U.S. Right Now.

Interim food critic Priya Krishna praises pastry chef Camacho’s pastries that include conchas and her signature pink cake. “Despite their saccharine appearances, not one of the desserts is overly cloying, and even the coffee drinks (Texas pecan horchata! Cranberry vanilla agua fresca!) strike the playful tone of the pastries,” she writes.

Comadre Panadería has been widely recognized, including by this publication; Camacho, who is now based in Ausitn, won Pastry Chef of the Year in the 2023 CultureMap Austin Tastemaker Awards. She also earned a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

Camacho and Comadre as a whole are both invested in using baked goods to make a more equitable world, from the bakery's early days as a fundraiser for disaster relief, to a current insistence on charging enough to support ethical and organic foods, and paying staff enough to keep up with rising costs in Austin.

Although Camacho was born in San Antonio and started her baking career there, she also spent a significant time in Seattle, Washington, where Comadre started as a pop-up. According to Austin Monthly, she then moved back to San Antonio, and then to Austin. But no matter where she is, the Mexican cooking traditions of her ancestors take precedent.

Mariela Camacho of Comadre Panaderia in Austin Mariela Camacho, Comadre Panaderia. Courtesy photo

The Times also recognized Houston's Koffeteria. Krishna hails the bakery for pastry chef-owner Vanarin Kuch’s creative fare that includes dishes such as beef pho kolaches, Chinese sausage breakfast tacos, and butter mochi.

“Some of Mr. Kuch’s offerings are rooted in his Cambodian American identity — he makes cornbread with the coconutty, scallion-forward flavors of Cambodian street corn — while others are odes to Houston’s multicultural makeup. But most of the fun of Koffeteria is having no idea what Mr. Kuch will do next, and eagerly awaiting his next innovation,” Krishna writes.

Open since 2019, Koffeteria has been riding high this year. It earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Outstanding Bakery and a CultureMap Houston Tastemaker Award for Pastry Chef of the Year.

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Comadre Panadería and Koffeteria are the only Texas establishments to make the Times’ list. Only California and New York City, which each have three representatives, earn more recognition.

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