Beloved Texas brewery abruptly closes after finding worldwide fame during Covid

A beloved Texas brewery that rose to fame during the pandemic is closing.

Weathered Souls Brewing Co. in San Antonio will close its doors for the final time on September 22, the company announced last week.

The brewery made national headlines by creating a stout called Black is Beautiful and raising $2 million following the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The beer, whose recipe was shared with other breweries, was used to generate profits for charities committed to police reform and victims of police brutality.

Despite the remarkable successes, the black brewery indicated in a post on its Instagram page that it was struggling with rising costs and declining alcohol consumption among its customers.

“The industry is facing several challenges and for us, rising ingredient costs and a noticeable decline in alcohol consumption played a major role in our decision,” said Kimberly Machado, the brewery’s director of sales and marketing.

“Despite our best efforts to adapt, it became increasingly difficult to keep up with the financial pressure,” she explained.

“It was a difficult decision, but after careful consideration we felt this was the right time to close this chapter.”

It’s not the only high-profile industry feeling the pressure of a post-pandemic drop in alcohol consumption.

In July, Vintage Wine Estates, one of the largest wine producers in the US, filed for bankruptcy, saying Americans were drinking less since the end of lockdowns.

Weathered Souls informed its customers that they would celebrate the closure by sharing a bottle of wine on September 21st starting at 11am local time, with closing time the following day at 5pm.

“We hope that when people talk about Weathered Souls in the future, they remember the community we built, the creativity we put into every brew, and the way we pushed boundaries to give San Antonio something it had never seen before,” Machado wrote.

Weathered Souls was founded in 2016 by Marcus Baskerville, Mike Holt and Seth Parker.

The beer immediately received praise for its range of hazy IPAs, imperial stouts and pastry sours.

It also helped introduce less popular beers to Texas, giving those beers lasting popularity in the state.

The brewery gained national attention for creating a stout called Black is Beautiful and raising $2 million after the killing of George Floyd

Weathered Souls was founded in 2016 in San Antonio, Texas

“There were some exciting new styles that San Antonio craft enthusiasts had to travel out of state to enjoy, and we were the first to produce them,” Baskerville said in a 2023 interview.

In November 2022, the brewery expanded with a second location in Charlotte, North Carolina.

However, the branch closed just six months after opening, with inflation and supply chain issues post-COVID being blamed.

Last year, Weathered Souls was a semi-finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Bar Program.