Hops and Grain Permanently Closes Austin Taproom

There has been a lot of speculation in recent months about the future of the Hops and Grain’s East Austin location after the San Marcos location closed permanently earlier this year. Today founder and owner Josh Hare announced on the brewery’s website that he has made the tough decision to close the East Austin taproom and focus their efforts on production:

“After a lot of thought and deliberation, I’ve made the difficult decision to close the doors at our Austin taproom. For the foreseeable future, we’ll be focusing all of our energy and resources on the production and distribution of our beers. Since May, our taproom has struggled to get by. And after ceasing operations at our San Marcos production facility earlier this year, we’ve been unable to fill orders from distributors and retailers, leaving us solely reliant on taproom revenue for our survival.”

The pandemic has taken a brutal toll on Texas breweries as noted by the survey of Texas Craft Brewery Guild members earlier this year, resulting in the call to #SaveTexasBreweries. Over the past few months, we have reported on several Austin area breweries that were forced to close their doors due to the pandemic including Skull Mechanix, NXNW Stonelake, and Two Wheel Brewing.

In his letter to the community, Hare leaves the door open to reassure us all that Hops and Grain beers will be around a while longer:

“We’ve got quite a few plans in the works for 2021 and we are looking forward to working with our distributor and retailer partners to get more of our beer into more beer drinker’s hands very soon. We’ll have more updates in the coming weeks to let you know when you can expect to see our cans on the shelves again. In the meantime, stay safe out there and we’ll see you all soon.”

This community will continue to rally around the local independent breweries that we all love, so please continue to help #SaveTexasBreweries.