Sad news out of Fort Worth this week as Bearded Eel Craft Brewery announced they were closing their doors effective December 31, 2015. While many outside of the Fort Worth area may not have sampled their beers, we were lucky enough to get our hands on a bomber of Purple Unicorn, which was a delicious and unique Farmhouse Wit IPA.
We’re really disappointed to see them exit the market because they were making beer off of a 1.5 barrel system that allowed flexibility in what they brewed and gave their customers a chance to sample different styles that were one-off or experimental brews. We found them to be innovative and unique in their tastes.
However, what we believe is harming the industry is the need to package and distribute beer from smaller breweries. Bearded Eel did not offer any brewery tours to the public and therefore the personal connection with the brewery and the staff wasn’t as strong as some of the other breweries in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It’s clear that the financial difficulty with growing a brewery, packaging bomber bottles, distributing to local area stores and continuing to innovate and create new products is too challenging using a smaller brewing system.
What we’re excited about is the continued commitment that owners Becky and B.J. Burnett have to the craft beer industry. They have promised that they will actually share their beer recipes to the public so they can live on through homebrewers. Plus, a YouTube channel and new website devoted to craft beer will help them continue to focus on the craft where they saw such success.
We’re hoping that more nanobreweries can open and fill the gap that many breweries don’t cover. However, it’s clearly becoming more difficult to do so without a successful taproom to maximize beer profit through direct sales of brews to the public. Until then, we’re hoping that fewer nanobreweries get into the bottling and packaging aspect until they have the ability to produce enough beer to satisfy the demand.