This is awesome. Love getting more craft beer options in San Marcos.

https://wefunder.com/hopsandgrain

What are you building?

After 5 years of rapid growth in our local market, we are setting out to build a second production facility and tasting room in San Marcos, TX with the goal of tripling our current production capacity and reaching a vibrant, fast growing market of young professionals.

We plan to carry our attention to detail, adherence to quality standards and devotion to consistency to this new facility. We’ll be building a state of the art brewery and a large tasting room and event space for private events as well as weekly hours for sampling and tours. Our expansion to San Marcos will enable us to reach more people, introduce new products and bring our capacity from 13,000 barrels to 33,000.

Why are you expanding and how did you choose the new location?

The plan for this new expansion is to enable our current facility to keep operating at full capacity. The new facility in San Marcos will also have an on-site tasting room and production space similar to our Austin facility. San Marcos as a city is much easier from a city code perspective than Austin which also heavily factored into the decision making.

San Marcos is growing incredibly fast. There are almost 35,000 students there and a large population of young professionals. Because the cost of living is much cheaper than Austin, many people live there and commute into the city. We’ve been wanting to expand down into the San Antonio market, Houston, El Paso and then eventually Dallas/Ft. Worth. This second facility will enable us to service all of those new markets.

The corridor between San Antonio and Austin is connecting more closely every year. San Marcos is perfectly positioned between the 2 cities and there is a lot of commuter traffic up and down that corridor.

Have you chosen the site for the new brewery yet?

We’ve been looking at a lot of properties in San Marcos and have a number of great potential sites. We’ve already met with the local city and building offices there and have a good idea for the construction timeframe. I already know exactly how long the brewing equipment takes to fabricate and make. Wrapping up the fundraising piece is the next step for us.

whoa - that's freakin awesome!

Guess I missed this on here.

The H&G guys are really great. They are following a build-up model very similar to what Real Ale did, except doing it faster. H&G also operates with the brewers having a tremendous amount of creative license to experiment--they are almost like a cross-breed between Real Ale & Rogue culturally. This move is mostly about getting themselves geared up for broader distribution given product success in grocery stores. Their brewery in East Austin is cool, but is VERY cramped. I can't imagine how cramped it is with the quantity of canning they've been doing. I think I counted six H&G product lines on the shelf at HEB last time I hit the beer section.

It is also likely that they'll start brewing/canning for other breweries by contract in this new San Marcos space.

their current space is way cramped. i need to give them some more love at heb the next time i pick up a sixer. been lazy and just grabbing hans pils about 75% of the time lately.

For now...Scott Gregson is working hard to change that.

Would love a Bobcat brew sold at games ala Ragin Cajun (which is surprisingly tasty for a novelty beer).

Hahahaha

I mean, he makes a good point.

Hops & Grain posted an update with some info in regards to their San Marcos location:

https://www.craftbeeraustin.com/hops-and-grain-brewing-switches-to-brewpub-license/

Hops and Grain Brewing is currently in the works to get their license switched over from a brewery license over to a brewpub license. The main advantage for them is that they will be able to sell beer to go. They will also be able to avoid the current taproom barrel limits over multiple locations. Since H&G founder, Josh Hare, also has an ownership stake in Kerrville’s Pint & Plow and two other future Hops & Grain locations, it made more sense to move forward with brewpub permits.

With production spread out over the two main H&G locations, they will easily be able to stay under the 10k bbl limit that a brewpub license holder is limited to. Pint & Plow, which is a restaurant and brewery, will be able to operate more like a traditional brewpub as well.

As far as their new San Marcos location goes, it is currently a bit behind where they would like it to be due to some structural issues with the building. With that said, it looks like November will be the time that they start testing their equipment with an opening following sometime after that.

Then, their sour facility will follow, which currently is aiming for a Spring opening in far East Austin. This facility is currently being used as can storage until the San Marcos facility can open up to offload them there. Once the sour facility is open, the brewpub license will help them be able to sell bottles on site there, as opposed to being forced to sell them through distribution means.