Yazoo Brewing Company

Yazoo Brewing really started with a homebrewing kit bought from the back pages of Rolling Stone in 1993. I was a cash-poor college student living in an old farmhouse in Virginia, and brewing my own beer seemed a little less illegal than the pot-growing operation my other housemates were involved in. I was amazed that I could make something that actually tasted like beer at home! I kept on brewing, even when my wife Lila and I returned home to Mississippi after college, and then when we moved to Nashville in 1996.  

In October 2003, we opened the doors and began selling kegs of Yazoo Pale Ale, Dos Perros, Spring Wheat, and Onward Stout to local bars and restaurants, quickly gaining an enthusiastic local following. We replaced the Spring Wheat with our Hefeweizen after winning a Gold Medal for the hefeweizen at the 2004 Great American Beer Festival, and started bottling our beers in 2005. Other local favorites like our Sly Rye Porter and our Hop Project rounded out our line-up of beers. In 2009, we managed to brew Tennessee’s first ever legal high-gravity ale, Yazoo Sue, after managing to get a distillery license. Our little brewery grew and grew, until we couldn’t fit any more equipment in the building.