BEER VACATION: A growing trend at Houston area craft breweries

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Need a vacation? How about a beer vacation?

It's a growing vacation trend, where men and women are spending their time off visiting craft breweries and brew pubs around the country. And it's happening here in Houston.

From Conroe to Katy, to downtown Houston, growing microbreweries are getting really crafty.

You can now belly up to the bar at nearly 40 brew pubs in the greater Houston area, but what if you've never tried craft beer before?

You can start out with something light like blonde ales and amber beer.

Almost every brewery has daily specials and happy hours, luring beer drinkers and non-beer drinkers alike.

"My favorite kind of surprise is people who think they don't like beer, drink and say this doesn't taste like beer," said Dave Fugeron of Southern Star Brewery.

"We want that consumer, their first time in a craft brewery to walk into a brewery and taste that beer and go 'This beer is amazing. I had no idea,'" said Travis Nance of No Label Brewery.

Now the love of craft beer has many people taking beercations, traveling around the county, country and even the world to try new brews.

"Little bitty day trip, not even a day trip, you take from Houston and come up and 45 minutes you're here. And they have our beer and they go, 'That's good. Let me try something else' and that leads them to other beers and other breweries as well," Fugeron said.