A beloved Texas brewery that rose to fame during the pandemic is on the verge of closing.
San Antonio’s Weathered Souls Brewing Co. will close its doors for the last time on Sept. 22, the company announced last week.
The brewery made national headlines for creating a stout called Black is Beautiful and raising $2 million following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
The beer, whose recipe was shared with other breweries, was used to generate proceeds for charities focused on police reform and victims of police brutality.
Despite its notable successes, the Black-owned brewery said in a post shared on its Instagram page that it had been hit by rising costs and a decline in customer alcohol consumption.
San Antonio brewery Weathered Souls Brewing Co. rose to fame in 2020
“The industry has faced several challenges and for us, rising ingredient costs and a noticeable decrease in alcohol consumption played a major role in our decision,” said the brewery’s director of sales and marketing, Kimberly Machado.
“Despite our best efforts to adapt, financial pressures became difficult to sustain,” he explained.
“It was a difficult decision, but after careful consideration, we felt it was the right time to close this chapter.”
It is not the only high-profile company to have felt the pressure of a drop in alcohol consumption following the pandemic.
In July, Vintage Wine Estates, one of the largest wine producers in the US, filed for bankruptcy, blaming Americans for drinking less after lockdowns ended.
Weathered Souls informed its customers that it would celebrate its closure by hosting a community bottle-sharing gathering starting at 11 a.m. local time on Sept. 21, before closing at 5 p.m. the following day.
“Our hope is that when people talk about Weathered Souls in the future, they remember the community we built, the creativity we put into each drink, and the way we pushed boundaries to give San Antonio something it’s never seen before,” Machado wrote.
Weathered Souls was founded in 2016 by Marcus Baskerville, Mike Holt and Seth Parker.
It received immediate praise for its range of cloudy IPAs, imperial stouts and pastry sours.
He is also credited with introducing less popular beers to Texas, helping them gain lasting traction in the state.
The brewery gained national attention for creating a stout called Black is Beautiful and raising $2 million in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Weathered Souls was founded in San Antonia, Texas in 2016.
“There were these new and exciting styles that typically San Antonio craft fans needed to go out of state to enjoy and we were the first to start producing them,” Baskerville said in a 2023 interview.
The brewery expanded with a second location in Charlotte, North Carolina in November 2022.
However, the establishment was closed just six months after opening, blaming inflation and post-Covid supply chain issues.
Last year, Weathered Souls was a semi-finalist for a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Bar Show.
