AUSTIN BREWERY CLOSINGS SEE MOVES TO EAST WILCO

J.D. Gins is right at home walking the streets of Taylor and saying hello to the people who have been drinking his beer over the last seven years.

The co-founder and original head brewer of The Texas Beer Co. said the changing nature of the beer business now has him spending much more time pounding the pavement of cities all over the state to keep the business strong.

“I’m just traveling the state trying sell some beer,” said Gins, who runs the brewery with his wife and Texas Beer CEO Megan Klein. Their brewery is at 1331 W. Second St. in Taylor.

It has been a tough few years for breweries in Texas post-pandemic as they adapt or close their doors in the wake of changing tastes, higher costs and other hardships of the recovery.

There are still a few people, however, who are pursuing the dream of opening a craft beer brewery in Williamson County, even as a spate of Austin-area beer makers are shutting down for good.

“You’ve seen a number of breweries close and you’re probably going to see a lot more,” Gins said.

In east Williamson County, as the population grows, several projects are in the works or expanding.

In Hutto, Rockabilly Brewing Co. started small, and is now renovating space to expand to a larger brewing system that is more sustainable. 

Another Hutto brewery, Power Brewing Project, hit a snag in permitting in advance of their planned grand opening late last year. It is expected to open sometime later this year.

And a distillery slated for an old cotton gin property in Taylor is on hold.

In Round Rock, Bluebonnet Beer Co. is staying the course after 10 years in business, the new 3rd Level Brewing is finding its footing just off the bustling U.S. 79 and the northernmost outpost of Austin-based Pinthouse Pizza’s four locations is making big batches of beer and serving a lot of pies.

David Hulama, founder of Bluebonnet, started out brewing classic beer styles such as a roasty porter, Vienna lager and India pale ale variations. He has stuck to his guns and sells most of his beer at a brewery taproom and a few draft accounts to nearby bars.

“We didn’t realize it would align with our core crowd so well,” Hulama said.

Round Rock and East Wilco residents tend to be more conservative in their beer style preferences, while a younger drinking crowd in Austin has leaned in on trendier beer styles including pastry stouts, fruited sour beers and juicy IPAs.

The brewery owner is holding his own a decade later, but has felt the industry slump like most other breweries.

“Beer consumption is down with people having less discretionary income. Our taproom sales have slowed down,” Hulama said. “Everything has gotten so expensive and it’s hard to raise prices.”

He said his rent has doubled like many breweries that recently closed their doors in the Austin-Round Rock metro area. The difference could be that some face the double-whammy of drastically increased overhead while still carrying a heavy debt load from starting up or previous expansions during boom years, he added.

Gins said Texas Beer Co. began in downtown Taylor on Main Street in 2016 as part of a revitalization effort, but was eventually the victim of the downtown success they helped make happen as rents went up.

“We were subsidizing the Main Street location off the back of our production facility,” Gins said.

The larger location, built out in 2018 a mile east of the former downtown taproom, can make 30 barrels of beer at a time, or enough to fill more than 1,600 six packs of brews such as Hoppy Duck IPA, Bill Pickett Porter or King Grackle Stout for sale in bars, restaurants and stores around the state.

Growth through distributor deals in large and small markets fueled Texas Beer Co. until the pandemic shutdowns beginning March 2020 sent numerous industries in a tailspin.

It didn’t break Taylor’s only brewery, but it did squash a deal for wider distribution in the Houston market. The beer still has a big footprint in the state as Gins expands the territory from El Paso to Lumberton near the Louisiana border, and Amarillo to Brownsville.

“Our labor is kind of low because we have such a big (brewing) system,” Gins said. That has given them an edge over breweries that depend heavily on small-batch systems and taproom sales.

When it comes to selling beer at the brewery, they rely on events such as the upcoming Texas Independence Day blowout and an eighth anniversary party in May.

What would help even more is to have another brewery in Taylor because beer tourists are more likely to visit a small city with more than one brewery, just the same as clusters of breweries in one area of a large city, he said.

“The promise of Taylor is not quite there yet,” Gins said of the anticipated population growth and workforce with more money for discretionary spending. “Frivolous beer drinking is every brewery’s profit margin.”

Taylor was in line for a distillery near downtown, but the status of the project is unknown.

Bushel & Bale LLC was granted a state license to manufacture distilled spirts in Dec. 27, 2022, according to a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission database. The location tied to the license is listed as 308 Sturgis Str..

The building at that location is a disused cotton gin on about 1.5 acres and there is no activity on the property. Attempts to reach the person behind the distillery, Andrew Braunberg, were unsuccessful.

Braunberg is an original owner of Still Austin Whiskey Co. and author of the recently released “Fires, Floods, Explosions and Bloodshed: A History of Texas Whiskey.”

A June 2023 article about the book in Texas Monthly mentions Braunberg was working on a whiskey distillery and brewery in Taylor.

Hutto’s Rockabilly Brewing Co. opened last March and closed Dec. 17 for slow winter months to expand the brewery and make improvements that include a permanent children’s playscape to replace a rented bounce house.

A reopening date hasn’t been set but is tentative for the first quarter of the year. Jimmy Calhoun, who started the brewery with his wife, Brandi Calhoun, also is working to expand the repertoire of beers for the reopening to build on the success of their signature Tangerine King.

Several massive relief packages were passed by Congress shortly thereafter, allowing many smaller breweries to keep making beer and selling packaged beer to go with the socially distanced pickup of online orders.

Inflation pressures, back rent being due, rent increases and loan payments started catching up with breweries in 2023 and returned them to a shaky footing.

Bluebonnet Beer’s Hulama said breweries that can stick it out long enough and make adjustments will come out okay.

“There’s tons of residential construction between Round Rock and Taylor and [new residents] have got to spend their money somewhere, be that on craft beer or other things,” he said.

“Flexibility or adaptability — whatever you want to call it — brewers are problem solvers,” he added. “We use whatever is in our toolbox to solve the problems and then move on.”