So I managed to make it by Southern Brewing and Booth's. At Southern Brewing, they had a decent selection of hardware/equipment, two really knowledge guys who were very polite, helpful, and patient, an okay to good hop section, no LME that I saw, a good selection of DME, and a great selection of grains (over 100 different malts).
At Booth's, you could tell they haven't been open long. The girl working there was really cool and they had a few beers going on-site and a few done that you can try, but the hardware selection is kinda limited and the grain selection is really limited. They do brew days there on occasion from what I was told and that's pretty cool.
While at the Yuengling brewery, I managed to get a few hint-hints from the chemist. That paired with what I already know about their classic lager and based on what we can taste in it, we've come up with a recipe that I'm working on. We'll see how it turns out! In the meantime, I hauled 9 cases of the stuff back to Texas to hold me over...