Our beginning

By Amanda Trimm

Like many breweries, our team now known as Barking Armadillo Brewing started as homebrewers.  It all started back in 2013, when Jacob and I started dating. One of the first times Jacob was having dinner with my parents, the topic of homebrewing came up. My father talked about how he had gotten into homebrewing over a decade ago and still had a kit from Austin Homebrew that was collecting dust somewhere in a closet.  Jacob eagerly took it off his hands.  Jacob brewed the first batch with his best friend since childhood, Bryan Cantu, who shared a similar passion for craft beer.  Pictured here is the first batch, a Texas honey ale called the Honey Badger.  Eventually Jacob and Bryan started experimenting with different beer styles, malts and hops.   Over a few years, we unknowingly “conducted research” by visiting over 100 breweries and brewpubs around the state,  country, and Germany and started envisioning what starting a brewery would be like.   We were intrigued by the stories and ingredients behind craft beers and inspired by the laid-back environment of breweries and strong sense of community and charity that breweries created surrounding themselves.  Enjoying a craft beer was not just about drinking a beverage, it was an experience.  

Barking Armadillo, LLC was officially established in 2017 in the form of a garage nanobrewery. By this point, the initial home-brew kit evolved into a three tier system in our garage.  At the time we created the LLC, we weren’t sure if an actual brewery open to the public would ever happen, but we were happy with just homebrewing and giving out free beer to our family, friends and neighbors.  We helped sponsor local neighborhood live music events in our neighborhood at the time (Mueller in Austin).  

In 2018, due to my long commute to Temple for work, Jacob and I moved from Austin up the road to the lovely city of Georgetown and started making steps towards turning our pipe dream into a reality. Jacob and Bryan felt ready to share their craft with the community and sought out an immersion course with Tom Hennessey of Colorado Boy Pub & Brewery in Ridgway, Colorado to gain more proficiency with large scale equipment and business planning.  With the help of family and our Uncle’s construction expertise, we’ve secured a location and construction is underway.  

In the meantime, your brewers are hard at work fine-tuning recipes and building out the brewery with their own hands. Continue to follow the BA blog for employee bios, community member highlights, taproom happenings, and more.  We look forward to sharing a beer with you soon!