American craft breweries seem to have a minor obsession with numbers.
Not the kind of numbers that matter, not real data like sales or profits or production totals, but in the completely irrelevant topic of what they choose to name their breweries. Let’s run the so-called numbers.
Obviously, 903 Brewers in Sherman looked to the local area code to identify their craft brewery, which has the advantage (or disadvantage) of forever tying it to a specific locale. This naming scheme would seem a natural default for at least one craft brewery in every area code, but in practice such brewery names are rare. The reasons may lie with previous attempts by Anheuser-Busch to trademark area code names about a decade ago after they acquired Goose Island Brewing in Chicago (brewers of the popular 312 Urban Wheat Ale). The legal availability may simply not be there.
Two is a sneaky one, as only one previous brewery has ever explicitly used the numeral in their title. Named after the cultivar of barley used in brewing, TwoRows was a Oklahoma-based brewpub chain that expanded into the Dallas and Houston areas but eventually closed just a decade or so ago (even though a couple of non-brewing locations remain open as simple fast-casual restaurants). Aside from that, Twin Peaks (unrelated to the television show of the early 1990s) operates its own chain of breastaurants with distributed brewing out of their Irving location, and Second Rodeo Brewing is doing well within the Fort Worth Stockyards. And when Anvil Brewing (based in Pittsburg, Texas, east of Dallas) decided to open a closer Metroplex site in Royse City, they named it a simple and direct Anvil Brewing No. 2.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a hazy IPA by any other name would smell just as sweet.” – William Shakespeare (maybe)
Three is somewhat the flavor of the month, with a couple of newly opened breweries favoring this number. Farmers Branch–based 3 Nations Brewing (who remains frustratingly ambiguous by using both the numeral “3” and the full spelling “Three” interchangeably) only recently opened their second brewing location in Anna, north of McKinney. Almost at the same time, the unrelated Three Empires Brewing opened as the first brewery in Frisco, and Three Wide Brewing (a NASCAR reference) is poised to open any day now near Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
Four implies quadrilateral stability, as exemplified by the long-running old guard of Four Corners Brewing in Dallas and Four Bullets Brewing (a poker reference) in Richardson. For a very brief time, the in-house brewing operations of Fair Park’s Craft & Growler was named 4 Elements Brewing (using the numeral) but ultimately rebranded itself as C&G Brewing.
Granbury’s Revolver Brewing (now owned by the MillerCoors subsidiary, Tenth & Blake) created a pilot brewery and taproom when the Texas Live! entertainment complex opened outside the Texas Rangers‘ new Globe Life Field in Arlington. Presumably named after its particular address, the small satellite brewery is formally named Revolver Brewing BLDG 5 Tap Room.
Six? Nobody local names their craft brewery after six.
Cedar Creek Brewing is located in Seven Points, south of Dallas and just across the reservoir from Gun Barrel City. And at its height, the long-running brewpub chain Humperdinks (now all closed) had a total of seven locations in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Edgewise Eight Brewing in Weatherford takes its name from a visual pun on the infinity symbol, which resembles the reclining digit.
Allen’s Nine Band Brewing met an unfortunate and scandalous end in the midst of the pandemic when its owner went to jail. However, the location has since been recently reborn as the quite successful but non-numerical Armor Brewing. PH
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