USA, TX: Elder Son Brewing buys Southern Yankee Beer Company’s facility near George Bush Intercontinental Airport

A small Houston brewery is growing about three times as large after buying out another area beer-maker. Elder Son Brewing, which runs a brewery and taproom in Houston Heights, has purchased Southern Yankee Beer Company’s facility near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Chron reported on February 27.

In the purchase, which was announced Monday after it closed around 11 a.m., Elder Son will move all production to the former Southern Yankee space at 930 FM 1960 in North Houston. Elder Son will increase production from 46 barrels to about 120 barrels, opening up more distribution opportunities for the brewery that opened at 946 Shepherd Dr. in October 2021.

Elder Son owner and head brewer Robert Frye said the process came together in about three weeks and will allow the brewery’s operations to grow organically.

“As far as all the beer I send out, we haven’t been able to keep up in the last eight months,” Frye said. “And with rising costs, you still have a ceiling for what you can charge through the taproom, and you want to maintain your margin through the taproom.”

Currently Elder Son distributes its beer—primarily IPAs and easy-drinking lagers—via its Heights taproom and local bars and restaurants. With the new facility, Frye’s strategy is to simply expand both streams. The Heights location will remain as a taproom only, while the former Southern Yankee spot will open Feb. 29 as a taproom and brewery. And Frey hopes to see Elder Son in more restaurants and bars across the Houston area.

The deal also means that Southern Yankee, the business from siblings Alex and Sydney Porter that started producing beers in 2018, will produce beers no more.

“She wants to do other things,” Alex said about his sister Sydney, chief brewer at Southern Yankee since day one. “Without her driving the production and the whole operation up there, we would’ve had to hire somebody. It would’ve been a managerial challenge, so we just felt it was better to sell.”

Compounding that issue was the current state of selling beer. Porter said with so much competition in the market, “it really only got harder in the last few years.”

The same can be said for other Houston-area breweries that closed their doors over the last year, among them Black Page Brewing Co., CounterCommon, Ingenious Brewing Co., Misfit Outpost and Twisted Acre Brewery. Facing their own financial troubles, likely hampered further by changing consumer tastes and competition, the fate of Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co. continues to be in limbo after its Sawyer Yards brewery and taproom was shut down in January.

That said, Southern Yankee Crafthouse, which opened in 2021 on Alabama Street in Montrose, remains very open, becoming the Porter family’s only food-and-beverage operation. It’ll keep serving Southern Yankee beer until it runs out, which Porter thinks is a month or two away.

Along with that, the Crafthouse, which recently won recognition as a top-100 restaurant in America via Yelp, will be pushing plenty of local beers, including those made by Elder Son.

“We’re planning on still having a pretty good relationship with them, planning on having their core beers on tap as they grow distribution,” Porter said.

Frye, who now owns all the Southern Yankee recipes, said Elder Son will maintain its current core of beers but might add a brown ale in the near future. Frye also hopes to start a barrel-aging program now that he has a larger facility, and he’ll probably “pull from” those Southern Yankee beers to, at the very least, improve what he’s doing. He may even keep some favorite Southern Yankee offerings alive.

“The mutual respect that we have means it was easy to sit down, and for (Porter) to say ‘Hey, my clientele at the Craft House really likes these beers; would you be interested in still making them?’” Frye said.

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