If you’ve spent any time at Meanwhile Brewing Co. in Southeast Austin, you know it makes some of the best beers in Texas, with a variety of IPAs among the most notable.
You also know that it’s a big attraction for families, with its soccer field, great food trucks, playground, kid-friendly drinks and room to roam. The city’s best brewery, which also hosts live music and is a desirable place to watch games on the big screen, recently upped its game in the family-friendly space. The trailer at the back of the wooded lot is now home to Meanwhile Creamery, serving some of the best soft serve ice cream in town, using fresh ingredients to create rich, deeply flavored ice cream.
“Meanwhile decided to start getting into the ice cream game, I assume the same way anybody does – with a very serious ice cream addiction. That’s how they got me in anyway. I need several frozen treats a day to survive,” Mackenzie Wilson, ice cream lead at Meanwhile, said.
The trailer, which opened after former tenant Besame left the property, makes sure to stay accessible to kids, with vanilla, chocolate and swirl as menu staples, but Wilson has room to flex her creative muscle, as well, with rotating flavors and sundae specials that incorporate thoughtful flavor profiles you’d expect from a restaurant.
In September, when it opened, the trailer featured a sundae made with burnt honey ice cream topped with an Earl Grey whip and a pistachio cardamom oatmeal crumble. The October special is a chantilly cake sundae, with chantilly soft serve, strawberry mash, blackberry jam and basil and mascarpone whip, and the November specials will be plays on pie flavors.
“It’s something that one of our owners has wanted for a long time. He likes ice cream, he says, more than beer at this point in his life,” Wilson said.
The Meanwhile Creamery opens at 4 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and noon on Saturdays and Sundays, serving until 8 or 9 p.m. The soft serve starts at $5.50, and, pro tip: the trailer also serves six beers on draft, about a half-dozen canned wines, N/A beer, soda, juice and more.
