| Saint Arnold Brewing Company | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Texas' Oldest Craft Brewery |
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| Location | Houston, Texas, USA | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Owner(s) | Brock Wagner | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Year opened | 1994 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Saint Arnold Brewing Company is a craft brewery located in Houston, Texas, named for a patron saint of brewing, Saint Arnulf of Metz. It was founded in 1994 by Brock Wagner and Kevin Bartol, graduates of Rice University. The brewery offers tours every weekday & Saturday afternoons which have attracted a large following. Saint Arnold has won numerous national and international awards.[1]
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Saint Arnold Brewing Company was founded in 1994, and was originally located on the far northwest side of Houston. It operated out of that location for more than fifteen years.
In 2008, St. Arnold announced that it planned to move from its current northwest Houston facility to a new facility in the Northside district, north of Downtown Houston.[3][4] By 2009 the company had purchased a three story 104,000-square-foot (9,700 m2) square foot brick building, constructed in 1914, which most recently served as a food service facility for the Houston Independent School District. The prominent location of the new brewery on the highway was key to its selection.[5] The redevelopment effort was expected to take a year to complete and cost a total of almost $6 million.[2] Due to unforeseen events, such as the theft of copper pipes from the building, the move was delayed, and was not completed until the northern hemisphere spring of 2010.
A new round of investing to help finance the new brewery gave 100 investors 30% of the company at an average investment of $25,000 each. St. Arnold also received a bank loan from the Small Business Administration at a 4.17% interest rate over 20 years. The brewery anticipated brewing over 30,000 barrels in 2010, up from 26,000 barrels at their previous location. The maximum capacity of the new brewery is over 100,000 barrels.[5]
The brewery relies on guerrilla marketing, brewery tours and e-mail marketing to grow its business. It has an e-mail list of 30,000 people and has run innovative programs like auctioning off naming rights to its brewing vessels on eBay.[5]
The brewery offers an uncommon recycling program through which usable bottle carriers may be redeemed for promotional merchandise.[6] 200,000 bottle carriers can be redeemed for the official St. Arnold's 1957 Bentley.[5]