Fort Worth’s favorite brewery: Here’s the winner of the Star-Telegram Readers’ Choice
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Best Breweries in Tarrant County
Here’s what you had to say about the best breweries in Tarrant County.
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Hop and Sting Brewing Co.’s core conviction is simple: There’s a beer for everyone.
Its trio of owners know stepping into the world of craft beer can be daunting — from different styles to flavor profiles. That school of thought, along with crafting crowd-pleasing brews, has led them to be named the Star-Telegram Reader’s Choice: Best Brewery in Tarrant County.
[MORE: Check out the 12 other nominated breweries]
The Grapevine brewery offers a multitude of options — with a brew for old-school drinkers, wine connoisseurs, coffee lovers, seltzer sippers or the beer novice.
A total of 13 breweries filled out the initial round of reader voting, followed by five finalists. At the end of the final round, Hop and Sting Brewing Co. took home the first place pint glass.
“One of the things that we know is that we make great beer and we know that our customers are very loyal, and they love our beer,” said Jon Powell, brewery co-owner and president. “So these kinds of votes and these awards are something that shows the world what we already know, and what our customers know. But it’s a great sense of pride for everyone who works here.”
[MORE: Readers’ Choice: Best Brunch in Fort Worth]
[MORE: Readers’ Choice: Best Fried Chicken restaurants]
The three amigos
Hop and Sting has been crafting brews since 2017, and nearly a year later opened its current Grapevine location.
Along with Powell, 37, as co-owners, are Brian Burton, 43, who also serves as vice president, and Lane Joseph, 34, who has many titles around the brewery, but settles on chief technology officer for now.
Powell is originally from California, moving to Southlake with his family when he was 13 years old. He ventured out West again to attend Humboldt State University, a college nestled under a canopy of coastal redwoods in Northern California. While in college he was exposed to a thriving craft brewery scene. Beer drinkers were swapping out commercial brands for brews crafted locally.
This was something he hadn’t seen in Texas.
He began brewing at home, making beer for his personal use. It was not an overnight success. Brewing his first batch of beer in his apartment was a learning moment.
“It was really bad at first. Actually, my first beer I can’t even believe I drank at all,” Powell said with a laugh.
Nevertheless, it was a stepping stone for Powell who learned that the brewing process is part science — something right up his wheelhouse. The first batch may have hardly been palatable, but the question of how to make it better led him wanting to learn more about the beer making process.
He was hooked.
Powell packed his home-brewing gear and an environmental science degree and moved back to the Lone Star State in 2008.
Before he could feed his newfound vocation, Powell finds work with oil and gas companies and the City of Flower Mound. At home he used his time continuing to hone his skills at crafting beer.
A lull in oil and gas production prompted Powell to apply to the American Brewers Guild Brewing School for additional training. His formal instruction led to an internship at Rahr & Sons Brewing Company in Fort Worth. From there it was a short hop to the Grapevine Craft Brewery.
It was at Grapevine Craft Brewery where Powell met Burton. The two began brewing together. Even after Powell left Grapevine for another stint at Rahr & Sons, he and Burton continued to brew together, mainly in Powell’s parent’s barn in Southlake, working on recipes and giving out samples to get feedback on their beer.
With Powell back in Fort Worth, Burton meets Joseph at Grapevine Craft Brewery. It didn’t take long for Burton to ask Joseph if he’d like to join the budding craft beer partnership. Joseph said yes, and the trio were off.
Bereft of formal business backgrounds, the three friends decided on a more populist approach to their work. According to Powell they wanted to be more hands-on. They made it a goal to be there everyday, be present and know their people.
“It’s more than just a employer, employee relationship,” Powell said. “Because of our friendship, I think that’s kind of been something that has filtered out to everyone.”
Brew, pour, drink
The Hop and Sting experience is geared to making patrons comfortable. Accommodating a diversity of tastes is paramount in the brewery’s operation. Novices are asked what they like to drink, and they go from there.
For example, if someone really likes coffee but not beer, they might start them off with an espresso stout, which is a dark beer.
“When you see that kind of that spark go off in their head, that’s really something cool,” Powell said.
The brews served at Hop and Sting are styles that have been around for a while, but have seemingly fallen out of flavor like IPAs, lagers, wheat, hefeweizen and stouts. Powell says its not that people don’t want to drink these styles, but craft brewers are making so many other types of beer.
The beer just has to be well-balanced.
When it comes to coming up with the different beer styles and flavors, that is mostly Burton who said he tries to think of what hasn’t been done before.
Before he got into the beer business, Burton was a marine biologist who traveled the world. His experience abroad exposed him to different cultures’ food and drink which, according to him, is as good an inspiration as any for finding flavors for his brews.
At Hop and Sting, he draws from experiences closer to home. For the “curse of the seven scorpions mango chile IPA”, for example, Burton pulled from his own family background. He said for anyone growing up in a Mexican family, they’ve more than likely been around spicy mango candies found in grocery stores and he wanted to incorporate that flavor profile in the brew.
The mango chile is also a favorite around the brewery, because it’s made with home-grown chiles from Joseph’s mom’s garden. She also grows the sage that is used for Hop and Sting’s “remedio southwest wit.”
“It’s kind of a neat little thing, because not a lot of breweries are able to kind of go and pick their proven ingredients, especially from a family member,” Burton said. “Beth, that’s Lane’s (Joseph) mom, she’s such a neat lady.”
Everything from a red velvet cookie ale to a peaches and cream sour, and chocolate chip cookie dough beer can be found at Hop and Sting. Burton was even able to include a beer inspired by his favorite movie, the 1986 fantasy action film “Big Trouble in Little China” that starred Kurt Russell.
The IPA is made with jasmine green tea and features a variation of the movie poster on the can. They even sent a case and t-shirt to one of the film’s actors, who happily cracked one open to celebrate the iconic film’s tie-in brew.
“If we could ever get Kurt Russell that would be awesome,” Burton said.
Cheers
Moving forward, Hop and Sting’s goal is to continue to grow and expand, Powell said.
The brewery expanded distribution last summer to Oklahoma and to cities just outside the Metroplex like Weatherford and Terrell. Perhaps even a second location or restaurant could be in the cards, Powell said.
The trio are bullish about their future, having survived two years of a pandemic. According to Powell, they had to shutter their doors a month after having their best February ever in 2020. They were on top of the world then, he said.
But the sky never fell on Hop and Sting.
The craft beer community showed up in consistent numbers and beer to-go proved to be a reliable business model for the brewery before the tap room could open back up.
Powell credits his brewery’s resilience to the support of the craft beer community. With them in mind, he said, Hop and Sting have been giving back to the community as much as possible.
Several of their beers are tied to different charities such as a firefighter group and the Miracle League, which is a youth baseball league for children with disabilities, where Powell is a former coach. They aim to give back around 1% of revenue every year, but in 2021 that figure almost hit 3%.
Brewing might be in their nature, but it wouldn’t be any fun without great people to share it with. And that’s a concept the trio believe in.
“I could have the best beer in the world, but if I’m around a bunch of jerks, it’s not going to make it that much better,” Powell said. “On the flip side, I can have a poor beer, but if I’m around my friends and family and having a good time, then obviously it’s not going to deteriorate my enjoyment.”
Hop and Sting Brewing Co. is located at 906 Jean St. in Grapevine and the taproom is open Monday to Thursday from 3 to 10 p.m., Friday to Saturday from noon to 10 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.
This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 12:00 AM.
