USA, TX: Klaus Brewing Co. closing, citing financial woes

Unfortunately, Houstonians have seen several brewery closings over the last 12 months, from well-known entities with enormous taprooms to family run businesses, and everything in between. The latest to announce its closing is one of the city’s most under-the-radar businesses, Chron reported on June 13.

Klaus Brewing Co., which has been creating some of the area's best German-style beers since 2018, will shutter after one final shift on June 15. Klaus Brewing founder Thomas Lemke wrote on Facebook that the brewery couldn't recover after a mechanical failure permanently wrecked its brewing system.

"Without an additional, very significant cost to dig deeper and find a possible solution, our only option is to purchase a replacement system," the Tuesday post read. "Neither choice is financially feasible, so after much deliberation, we have made the devastating decision to close Klaus Brewing."

Lemke thanked Klaus' staff and patrons for sticking with the brewery over the last six years. He also noted the brewery will stay open under regular hours through June 15, when it will host live music before shutting off the lights.

"We invite everyone to come get a few last pints and pick up some merch to remember us by," the post read.

A patron set up a GoFundMe fundraiser hoping to receive enough donations to pay for a new brewing system; as of the morning of June 13, $955 of a $120,000 goal had been raised.

When Klaus opened in 2018, it immediately perked the ears of craft beer lovers looking for more German beer options in the Houston area. Klaus specializes in harder-to-find German styles including helles lager, Märzen and altbier.

It's been a tough year for breweries both in the Houston area and in Texas as a whole, with businesses shuttering for a variety of reasons. A common thread connecting the closures is that profit margins are thinning in the craft brewing industry, making brewery operations more of a month-to-month gambit. One unexpected cost or untenable situation with no resolution could prove fatal, especially for smaller businesses.

For example, Humble's Ingenious Brewing Company cited multiple financial issues over a long period in ending its run in January, and the owner of Urban South Brewery told Chron, prior to leaving Houston in April, that it had too many issues with its landlord, including reduced accessibility for patrons.

"Overall, we've lost a ton of money," Urban South founder and CEO Jacob Landry told Chron when his business announced it was closing its Houston brewhouse and taproom. "There was a period where things were going really well, but in just the last year customers' inability to get to us really hurt."

14 June, 2024