In McKinney, there’s a new micro-brewery in town. Tupps is on deck to be the only other brewery besides Franconia to ever be featured on tap at Oktoberfest in Downtown McKinney this September.

Tupps brewery is named for the man, the legend, Tupper Patnode, founder and head brewer. A few retro arcade video games and potted trees sit scattered around the giant wooden spool tables, a play on the brewery’s home inside a 105-year-old cotton mill. There’s a chair lift hanging from the ceiling and a fire hydrant cemented into the bar, because Texas does what it wants.

Tupps has introduced 5 ales to the community: a golden pale ale, an IPA, a wheat beer, a black ale, and a roast pepper-infused pale ale. The bartenders, who’ve volunteered since Tupps opened in May of this year, offer up tastings and back stories for each of the brews.

The pale ale is actually a reddish gold. Brewer Chris Lewis says that most people drink with their eyes. It wouldn’t matter if Tupper used 10 times the amount of malt to make the beer dark as the black ale – it’d still be a pale ale. The result is a beer that’s not too aggressive, but not too girly.

Since Franconia brews German beers and Tupps is hyper-focused on ales, the two breweries can coexist together. I think we can all agree that’s a good thing for McKinney.

You can find Tupps on tap in many restaurants on the downtown square. I recently spotted Tupps at Sundown at Granada, a popular Dallas beer garden. Team Tupps says they are hoping to get the ale into cans this fall and onto shelves at stores like Whole Foods.