Holden A Beer & Austin Ale Trail Present: The 2026 ATX Brewery Bracket

Let the games begin!  Austin content creators and community advocates Holden A Beer and Austin Ale Trail have teamed up to present the fourth annual summer ATX Brewery Bracket, starting on June 12th.  The event is inspired by March Madness, and is a fun way to celebrate the brewing community in Austin – no sponsorships, no paid marketing, just a community-led competition to highlight all the breweries in town and decide the best of the best.

This year’s competition will kick off with a party hosted by last year’s winner Fast Friends Beer Company, on Thursday, June 11th from 5-8pm.  There will be games, giveaways, and a chance to draw up your own bracket before voting begins the next day.

The major enhancement this year is a dedicated website, where you’ll be able to follow along as the results come in.  This year’s bracket will be available very soon, and in the meantime you can take a look at prior years to see how it went down.  The actual voting will still occur in the Instagram story of @holdenabeer, so be sure to follow the account if you haven’t already.

Holden Easterling, the man behind the Instagram account, provided his thoughts on the history of the tournament:

“I started this March-Madness style bracket in June of 2023. Got the idea from watching college basketball during the 2023 tournament and thought it would be really unique and cool to do something similar with the brewing community. I’ve always been into the craft beer scene in Austin and have worked in the industry for several years and gotten to know it and its people pretty well.

I already had the Holden A Beer page and I thought a bracket style tournament would be a great way to give some visibility to the industry here in Austin and give the breweries something fun to compete against each other with in promotion of their brands. The goal was to get the community together in a fun and competitive way. Still the reason why I do it 4 years in a row and will continue to every summer.”

Good luck, and may the best brewery win!