Armadillo Ale Works closing its doors in Denton

Image © Brian Brown/Beer in Big D.

After nearly a decade of "Representin' Denton", Armadillo Ale Works has announced today, Sunday March 27, will be the last day of operations "for a while, if not forever."

Bobby Mullins and Yianni Arestis launched the brand with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2011. It would take until 2018 for Armadillo to secure a permanent location on Bell Ave. in Denton, but in the interim the company operated under production agreements at breweries in Dallas and Grapevine.

Armadillo's first commercial beers, Greenbelt Farmhouse Ale and Quakertown Stout, hit the market in early 2013. As was the case with many of the brewery's products, the names called attention to elements of Armadillo's hometown - in these instances, Greenbelt Trail, and the Quakertown community of the late 1800s (today commemorated by Quakertown Park).

Brunch Money, a pioneering imperial golden stout originally released in 2014, was arguably the brewery's most popular beer, but Honey Please received the most notoriety at national competitions. A mesquite bean blonde ale, Honey Please accomplished the rare feat of winning gold medals at both the Great American Beer Festival (2018) and World Beer Cup (2020). These accolades effectively recognized Honey Please as the best honey beer in America, and also the world.

A social media post cited financial impacts due to Covid-19 restrictions as a contributing factor to the closure.