Kitchens can be a weird and fickle thing for breweries to maintain. At some places, the kitchen becomes the star of the show, such as Nexus. At others, they remain a constant headache.

For Lizard Tail Brewing, the Industrial location’s kitchen was always more of the latter. Owner/brewmaster Dan Berry finally decided he had enough and closed it down, defying a trend that has seen more and more breweries without in-house food scrambling to add it.

“We’ve never made money, (probably because) it’s a weird location,” Berry said of the kitchen. “We’ve tried passing out fliers a couple every other months to all the other businesses around here. (I’m) looking at just doing this as an entertainment venue.”

That was the kickoff to our annual interview for the Look Back/Look Ahead Series. As he has been in the past, Berry was quite open with talking about Lizard Tail’s struggles, but he also expressed a bit of hope going forward.

“We took a beating in 2023,” Berry said. “I don’t know why, but I just feel positive this year. I’m not really sure (why). Everything seems to be moving in the right direction. Just a bunch of little things. I’m a musician, so I’m excited to getting bands back here.”

One surprising thing that has Berry excited about the rest of 2024 does not even involve Lizard Tail.

“This is going to sound weird, but I love that we’re going to have another meadery,” he said. “Quarter Celtic is starting to do mead. It’s just exciting. I’ve been waiting for someone else in town to do it. I’ve been meaning to talk to them about it. I love the mead, and no one is really doing it. Hopefully they get really into it. Twenty years ago, I was all about (brewing) the mead.”

Berry said he hopes to sit down and do a collaboration with Quarter Celtic, so yeah, no we are excited, too.

“I want to focus a little more on the mead now, since someone else is doing it,” he added. “I’m excited. If the word gets out about the mead, that’s a market that’s untapped here. People just need to know about it.”

Fear not, though, Lizard Tail will still remain a craft beer brewery first and foremost.

“In terms of our beer here, just feedback-wise, we’ve probably needed to do it since the beginning is just trim down our year-round menu,” he said. “I’m finally getting around to doing that 10 years later. We’re going to keep mostly the favorites, and give people more what they expect. I think when people think of a stout, they don’t think oatmeal, so we’re going to replace that with an American stout. The Mexican lager has been selling like crazy, the pilsner, the IPA, the honey pale, and maybe keep either the amber or the brown to keep the color spectrum. We’ll be down to six year-rounds, the least we’ve had (before) was 10, and mostly we’ve had 12.”

Berry said he would also like to start playing around more with the malt bills on his beers, focusing more on domestic malts as the cost of European malts continue to rise.

“There are some European malts you can’t get away from,” he said. “But, just in general, using more domestic malts, there’s a lot more local maltsters. It’s not that I’m not going to use European malts. But, I’m curious. The year-round (beers) are going to be 90-percent domestic malt. The Belgian biscuit malt, there’s nothing like it. The German Munich malts are hard to duplicate. But, other than that, our whole menu is going to be domestic malt.”

While Industrial has been a bit of a struggle, Berry was also happy to report that sales are good at the Heights and Nob Hill taprooms.

“Heights has always killed it,” he said. “It’s been doing really, really well. That’s probably 90 percent of the reason why I’m hopeful. That, and Nob Hill has finally turned the corner, they’re actually making money now. Not a whole lot. This place is still the money pit from hell. Getting the kitchen out of here is huge. We had great cooks in here, and great food, but it never really took off. It was just a huge headache. It distracts me from the other little things I want to do.”

For the rest of 2024, Berry said his main focuses will be on getting events booked at Industrial, brewing up more meads and more lagers, and adjusting those malt bills. His only real concern that is outside his control is the upcoming Interstate 25 construction project that could shut down the Comanche exit for a while.

Otherwise, things are looking up at Lizard Tail as they work to figure out how to make the Industrial location thrive, and that is the good news we can all use right now. A big thanks to Dan for the early morning (by my standards) interview.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister