04 Aug Fort Bend Curse? Rumors Fly About Texian Brewing Closing their Taproom

Fort Bend Curse? Rumors Fly About Texian Brewing Closing their Taproom

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. An announcement on Texian’s Facebook has the Houston beer nerds a-buzz as of 8:00PM Thursday August 3, 2017, and the early comments from Josh Haley are even more strange.

It is with great sadness that we announce that this Saturday, August 5th, will be the last day our taproom will open.

That’s how the post started out. Shares and the 😳 response began along with comments like “Yeah, they’re dead.” And one of my favorites, “Not sure how closing the taproom will help your business? Good luck.”

Our very own Chris messaged Josh to ask him about their latest announcement that Texian Brewing closing their taproom.

Josh had this to say, “Let’s wait a few weeks for the dust to settle. It’s a crazy time right now, and my wife is a school teacher, so we’re trying to get her ready for the school year.”

Josh, continuing the vague replies, “Let me coordinate and see what kind of information I can get to you. Sorry to sound vague but there are a lot of moving pieces right now.”

As a team, we have a few friends that are in education and we know that this can, in fact, be a super crazy time, but he’s the owner. That sounds a bit odd.

To add to the confusion, a Houston beer patriot connected some dots with a company called Fulbrook Ale Works. A little Facebook searching reveals that they have the same address as Texian.

A bit more digging reveals a half-built Fulbrook Ale Works website that mentions “Pending location.”

This is still all up in the air though. The only news we can share for certain is Texian Brewing Closing their Taproom. The rest is rumors and speculation. But we wanted hard answers for a few reasons…

If there are any false rumors, we’d like to use this platform we’ve built to squash them as quick as possible. Chris explained that explicitly to Josh.

And if there’s any truth to the rumors, we want to share the news with y’all faster than green grass through a goose!

But since this is all we got, we figured we’d share it sooner than later while everyone waits for “the dust to settle” at Texian Brewing.

If all these rumors about them shutting down are false, it makes sense that they might close the taproom to focus more on distribution. We’ve been drinking long enough to know that this business is definitely not all about the money. However, in order to keep the doors open, hard decisions have to be made from time to time.

Breweries make way better margins off their product when they keep it in house. There’s no middle man to take any of the cash!

BUT breweries also sell far more volume on store shelves, like hand-over-fist more. The competition is higher, and the profit is lower, but the volume covers for it.

The money that currently goes towards keeping the taproom open – electricity, man-hours, paying food trucks to come out (if you don’t reach the agreed minimums), that stuff could all be going to distribution in an attempt to increase their footprint in and around Texas.

Texian Brewing Closing their Taproom might make a bit more sense with this in mind.

Best known for FM 359 and Charlie Foxtrot a Brett Saison and Sour Wheat Ale, respectively, they’re brewing unique beers. You don’t see a lot of folks really doubling down on the sours like Texian has. They’ve got a nice spot too. They’re always doing big crawfish boils, movie and game nights on the big screen – one has to ask, why would they really be just shutting it down with no notice?

That doesn’t make much sense.

You have to admit, this is kind of weird. A lot of people are speculating that they’re closing up shop. Chris offered a way to help dispute those rumors and the owner wants to wait? What do y’all think? We’ll keep y’all posted on this as more details become available.

Beers to you, Houston! 🍻