Everyone’s favorite beer bar will be hosting a beer dinner/tasting this Thursday, February 26th, featuring the Lagunitas Brewing Company. Petaluma, California-based Lagunitas has been tearing up the beer world with their unabashedly over-the-top beers, and they’re bringing a nice selection of seasonal brews to the Fort Worth Flying Saucer for a beer/food pairing.

They’re keeping the crowd small to make it an intimate affair and to ensure that everyone has a chance to soak up the knowledge dropped by Lagunitas’ co-founder and “Head Beer Weasel”, Ron Lindenbusch.

Tickets are $40 for the riff-raff and $35 for UFO club members. (UFO club membership is $14. With it you get a free t-shirt, a card to track the beers you try, and you’re exempted from cover charges on the weekends. Once you’ve done 200 different beers, you get a platter with your name and a pithy slogan on it (look for mine on the patio), and a party thrown in your honor with a $100 bar tab to help pay for it.)

Here are a few pictures I took at the Fall Beer Festival put on by the Flying Saucer on Saturday. This year was a great success, according to “Captain” Keith Schlabs, the Food and Beverage Director at Eight-O management, the Flying Saucer’s parent company. He told me that they had already sold 30% more tastings this year than last by about 8:30, with another two and a half hours to go!

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The Flying Saucer will be hosting its 3rd annual Fall Beer Festival this Saturday in the parking lot behind the bar. This year they’ll have 20 beers on tap in 5 categories: Texas’ Best Brews, Belgian Ales, German Uber Lagers, Cap’n Keith’s Picks, and Cask-Conditioned Ales.

I’ve had a great time at the last two, and I’m sure this years event will be just as good.

The party starts at 2PM, call 817-336-PINT if you have any questions.

I found a posting on the BeerAdvocate Forums from a local beer fan stating that he’d heard that the Flying Saucer would be smoke-free inside as of January 1st. No, they don’t sell enough food to classify themselves as a restaurant instead of a bar in the eyes of the ordinance, this is a change that the management has been wanting to make for a while, and now they are. Thinking this was too good to be true, I e-mailed a couple of my friends who are bartenders there, and they confirmed it.

This is a GREAT sign that even though the City Council didn’t have the guts to stand up for public health when they had the chance, a few responsible bar owners/managers are willing to give a crap about their employees’ and customers’ health enough to finally clean up the air in their establishments.

The Lone Star International Film Festival is just starting to warm up, and Thursday was definitely more encouraging than Wednesday. I was finally able to make it to a couple of movies, and you can read more about it after the jump!

Bernie and I went to see Hell on Wheels, a documentary about roller derby in Austin that was shot BEFORE it started to really take off and get its own reality show. It was really good, with just the right amount of feel-good and tension that a good documentary should provide.

After that we headed over to the Four Day Weekend Theater to catch the DIY Shorts presentation hosted by local filmmaker James Johnston. Of the 6 short films that we saw, James’ were excellent, and the one about the guy and his dog was really moving. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried at the end of it.

After the shorts (actually we had to leave early to make it in time) we went to catch Red Road, a movie filmed in Scotland. I’m not going to ruin it for you in case you get a chance to see it, but it was really, really good. I’ll just say that it was really intense, and leave it at that.

As Bernie and I left the Palace, Steve-O called to tell me that he was heading to the Saucer after seeing “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead,” to spend some time in the “hospitality suite,” which was really Half-Acre Hall. As I’m climbing the stairs to meet Steve, Bill Paxton is heading the opposite direction, so I turn around, thinking (rightfully so) that the party is leaving. It turns out that they’re all heading back to the Palace to introduce Frailty, and Steve and I have been personally invited by Tom Huckabee to come over for the intro. What moron would turn down that invitation?

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