Well, that's depressing. Granbury's Revolver Brewing closes up shop

It’s been a tough, tough year for the craft brew industry and the casualties just keep mounting. One of the largest and most beloved Texas breweries has turned off the brew kettles for good. The sad news broke over the weekend in the digital edition of the Houston Chronicle.

Revolver Brewing was founded in 2012 by University of Texas alumnus Rhett Keisler and former Sam Adams brewer Grant Wood. Four years later, it was acquired by Molson Coors, formerly MillerCoors. (The founders stepped down from leading the brewery in 2020.)

In 2025, craft beer (and even seltzer) are hurting bad. As Molson Coors looks to trim malt beverage brands from its portfolio, the beverage giant went looking for a buyer and found one in the cannabis-focused aggregate Tilray Brands (Nasdaq: TLRY).

The operational shift is part of a series of decisions by the new owners, who have lately gobbled up several esteemed craft breweries across multiple states. It seems that Tilray are looking to consolidate and centralize their brewing pipeline. They began to nudge production away from Granbury shortly after the acquisition was announced in the summer of 2024.

For beer fans, there’s two bright spots: Revolver beer is still being made (somewhere) and Revolver will retain a taproom (for now). But according to a LinkedIn post by senior operations manager P.J. Milly, the flagship brewhouse has permanently shut down its operations.

The Revolver Brewing brand is best known for Blood & Honey, a blockbuster beer that helped birth Texas’s modern craft brew scene. Ubiquitous and often imitated, Blood & Honey is a cloudy wheat ale flavored with blood orange zest and Texas wildflower honey. The beer–true to its name–is marketed as an intriguing mixture of sweet and tough. Its broad appeal transcended categories of age and gender in a way that few beers and seltzers are able to.

Posing with the mother lode of Blood & Honey cans during happier times for Revolver Brewing.

For many Texans, Blood & Honey was their first craft beer–or at least, their first unfiltered ale. Chilled and tipped into a glass, it’s semi-opaque and orange. The taste is musky, sweet-tart, and–at 7% ABV–just the right amount of octane for summer and fall. I was always happy to see it in bottles at concerts or on tap at BBQ joints, a welcome middle ground between piss-poor light lagers and aggressively hopped, overly boozy double IPAs.

Far from being a one-trick pony, Revolver had a roster of well-made beers in traditional and experimental styles. Many were seasonal and small-batch, with clever art and merchandise to match. These “other” beers lived in the shadow of their famous sibling–but the “Anodyne” wheat wine and “Texas Haze” fruited series were always worth seeking out.

If you came to Granbury for the Blood & Honey, you stayed for the brewery’s vibes. Located 40 minutes southwest of Fort Worth, Revolver’s Granbury outpost was a playground for good beer and great times.

Live music and generous taps were flowing nearly every Saturday. For a modest fee, you could enjoy a tasting flight and one of the best production tours in all of North Texas. The brewery was an integral part of the Granbury community and an easy weekend trip for Dallasites. I went several times over the years, and sent many friends on their own local brew-cations.

Parent company MillerCoors once had both the cash and the inclination to fund ambitious wonderlands of beer–the treehouse-like Blue Moon taproom in Denver and Revolver’s sprawling, barndominium-chic campus are just two examples. But many believe that craft brewing’s shining moment has passed. New owner Tilray, it would seem, has impulses that are more frugal:

As the Tilray Beverages business continues to evolve and transform, we have undertaken a reallocation of resources to enhance efficiency and leverage synergies. As such, large-scale production will transition from the Revolver Brewing facility to other brewing locations.

Is this corporate-speak for “We bought the logo and the recipe–we’re not getting attached to the place or the people”? Sure sounds like it. At least someone is making sure the synergies are leveraged.

Sources report that the Revolver taproom is slated to stay open, but it’s not entirely clear what that means. Revolver has a smaller taproom that’s closer to Dallas, in Irving. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to? Tilray won’t need the massive Granbury production building if they’re not brewing Blood & Honey there, and it’s not close enough to major population centers to do much for brand visibility.

My bet is that they do some limited, taproom-only batches for a while, until the suits begin to grumble about the cost of staffing and maintaining a giant exurban facility. Maybe they try to market it as a corporate meeting or event space. If that doesn’t pan out, it’s probably going to be sold to investors for more Granbury crypto farms.

In short, it’s a sad day for a brewery that was consistently a bright star in our state’s beverage scene. Revolver was one of craft brewing’s greatest success stories. They created an enduring hit product and they did right by their community–their tale shouldn’t end this way. While the sweet and citrusy flavor of Blood & Honey may not change, moving its production from Granbury certainly leaves a sour taste in our mouth.