The Story of Rabbit Hole Brewing

Rabbit Hole Brewing was founded in February of 2012 by 3 friends-- Laron Cheek, Tom Anderson and Matt Morriss. Anderson and Morriss met in 2001 when they were working as software engineers at Motorola, and Anderson met Cheek some time before that when both were standing in line to get an autograph at an Anne Rice book signing. Morriss started home brewing in 2004 with some friends, and Anderson joined them in the hobby about a year later. In 2006, Anderson and Morriss, along with Jeff Poirot and John Waschka, founded the Horsemen of the Hopocalypse home brew club in Ft. Worth. The group became active among the local home brew competition circuit, winning dozens of awards and honing their craft along the way.

Around 2011, Cheek, Anderson and Morriss recognized that the craft beer market was set to take off and begin seriously contemplating opening a commercial brewery. The trio founded Rabbit Hole Brewing in February of 2012, and began the long process of finding a space, procuring permits and licenses and assembling equipment. The group decided on Justin, Texas, a small community on the outskirts of the DFW metro area, since they planned to focus on production and distribution. Since at the time it was not legal for a commercial brewery to sell beer directly to the public, taproom traffic was not much of a concern and being located in an industrial area provided cost savings. Rabbit Hole Brewing leased a space at 608 Topeka Ave in Justin, and brewed the first commercial batch of beer in November of 2013. The first keg was sold to the Mule Barn in Justin on December 11, and the official launch party was held at Oak St. Draught House and at East Side Denton on the evening of December 14. The first two beers to be released were Mike Modano's 561 Kolsch and Rapture Fusion Brown Ale. Mike Modano, forward for the Dallas Stars hockey team and holder of the record for the most goals scored by a U.S. born hockey player (561), was in attendance for the launch.

The story of Mike Modano's involvement with Rabbit Hole starts a few years before the opening of the brewery, when the Horsemen of the Hopocalypse club was invited to brew a batch of beer using Crazy Water from the Famous Water Company of Mineral Wells to be distributed to friends and investors of the makers of Crazy Water. One of the members of the Horsemen was the priest at the Mineral Wells parish where the owners of the water company attended mass, which is how the club had been discovered by the water company. The club brewed and bottled 20 gallons of Czech Pilsner using the company's water, and this beer was sent to all of the company's investors. One of these investors was Mike Modano, who was impressed with the quality of the product and contacted Crazy Water to find out where he could get more. This contact ultimately led to Modano becoming a sponsor to Rabbit Hole Brewing, and lending his name to one of their flagship products.

Rabbit Hole opened with just 3 workers; Morriss ran the production equipment and produced the beer, Anderson managed the cellar, lab and tasting room, and Cheek was in charge of sales and distribution. For a little over a year, the brewery self distributed throughout the Dallas-Ft. Worth region, focusing exclusively on kegged beer and selling to bars and restaurants. In the spring of 2014 they hired their first sales representative, Tait Lifto, who had previously worked as a sales rep at Deep Ellum Brewing in Dallas. Shortly after that, the brewery signed with Sons of John distributing to unload the distribution task in the local region, and began periodic trips to the Austin area to deliver beer there. With a change in the laws to allow brew pubs to sell directly to the consumer both on premise pints and beer to go, Rabbit Hole switched their license type from brewery to brewpub in 2015 and begin operating a tavern in their small tasting room and biergarten space. They also began canning beer in October of 2015, selling to grocery and liquor stores as well as directly to the public. This was also the year that Rapture Fusion Brown Ale won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the American Brown Ale category, one of may awards won by the brewery but certainly the most prestigious. By the end of 2016, Rabbit Hole was producing close to 1300 barrels per year, with 4 year round offerings (10/6 English Pale and Off With Your Red IPA, in addition to Rapture and 561) and a multitude of seasonal and special releases. They had established distribution agreements throughout the western half of the state, and were distributed from Wichita Falls to Austin and from Tyler west to Lubbock and Amarillo. The company had 3 full time sales reps, a part time brand ambassador, part time tap room manager and several bar tenders, and a full time production assistant.

When Sons of John went out of business in 2016, Rabbit Hole signed with Full Clip Craft Distributing in April of that year to maintain distribution throughout DFW and into Austin. Sales to the western part of the state were sagging, and the company pulled out of that region to focus on DFW and Austin instead. During 2017 and 2018, the number of seasonal beers and tap room events were increased significantly in order to attract a broader following, but increased competition from new breweries in DFW along with some distribution stumbles caused outside sales to begin to fall. The brewery's remote location, once a strong point due to reduced operating costs, became a liability as breweries closer to the population centers found it easier to attract attention. The brewery didn't have enough cash coming in to shore up flagging sales efforts, and after steep sales declines in the summer of 2019 the difficult decision was made to close down the brewery. The taproom closed for the final time on September 14, 2019.

Source: Matt Morriss, April 2020