Yazoo Brewing Company started from a homebrewer’s dream – Linus Hall’s love for making (and drinking) craft beer soon led him to open Nashville’s first production brewery since Prohibition. We opened our doors in October 2003 in the historic Marathon Motor Works building, and started by self-distributing kegs of Pale Ale, Dos Perros, Spring Wheat, and Onward Stout to local bars and restaurants, and we fortunately gained an enthusiastic local following. We quickly replaced the Spring Wheat with the now popular and award-winning Hefeweizen, and we started bottling our beer in 2005. Other local favorites like the Sly Rye Porter and our Hop Project IPA rounded out the line-up of beers. In 2009, Yazoo managed to brew Tennessee’s first ever legal high-gravity ale, SUE, our smoked porter and homage to the South’s proclivity to smoke all kinds of foods. In 2010, Yazoo moved to The Gulch, now one of Nashville’s most active neighborhoods. This allowed us to add a new 40-barrel brewhouse and room to produce more beer, which helped build our year-round lineup to 10!
In the summer of 2012 Yazoo began a series of sour and wild beers with local brewer/writer Brandon Jones called the Embrace The Funk series. Titled with Brandon’s popular sour beer website, this line of Yazoo beers explores the many wonderful beers that can be produced with wild yeasts, souring microbes and different wooden casks.
In December 2012 our Brewmaster Linus and “Wrangler of Funk” Brandon released the first beer in the series named “Wild Child”. Since then the “Embrace The Funk” series has been a staple in the Yazoo Taproom with special rotating offerings. Our ETF beers have been served at SAVOR in New York, “What The Funk” in Denver and on January 26th, 2014 the first bottles of ETF “Deux Rouges” were released (and sold out in 2 hours). Linus and Brandon are constantly creating new beers and different barrel variations for the Embrace The Funk series. The beers are mostly taproom exclusives so your best bet to enjoy their creations is to stop by soon!
We continued to grow enough that in early 2018, Linus Hall announced plans to move the Taproom and Brewery to a brand new 6.5 acre campus north of downtown – but not until Summer/Fall 2019!
Yazoo continues to be an independently owned and operated brewery – Linus and Lila Hall maintain 100% ownership and direction of the brewery, and you can frequently find Linus tinkering with something in the production facility 5-7 days a week!
Slightly hazy amber. Fruity hops nose (blackcurrant, plum, pear). Fresh hop taste is woody, lightly fruity. Bitterness is moderate. Malts are mostly pale, slightly toasty. The finish is dry, lingering long on the tongue with hop.
Sampled at the Knoxville Brewer’s Jam Oct ’07. They snuck this keg on without warning and I was lucky to be there to get a sample as it wasn’t part of their regular offering at the Jam. Pour produced a big, thick, long lasting head over a copper body. Light malt and citrus hop aroma. Well balanced, plenty of malt and hop usage.
Courtesy of Quake1028. Pours brownish with tan head. The aroma has lots of malts with caramel mixed with lightly roasted malts, some chocolate malts and also faint dark fruity esters. The flavor has an array of mild malt notes mixed with faint dark fruit, a bit of earthiness and faint floral hops. Nice.
Bottle. Dark brown beer with a light beige head. Toasty aroma with some sweet malt backing. Light roasty flavor with some caramel and a bit of fruit. Lighter bodied than expected. Definately a session beer. Had thought it was a mild, but the commercial description above makes sense
Bottle. Copper beer with a thin beige head. Caramel malt and slight citrus aroma. Citrus (grapefruit/tangerine) flavor with some malt backing. Good hop flavor with moderate bitterness. A bit of a metallic/tannic (stemmy) background flavor that kept appearing.
This has a beautiful pour. Tall off-white head over a clear, deep brown body loaded with ruby highlights. Bready yeast and malt in the aroma. Smooth with sweet malt and little hops presence. Very much like a brown ale. An easy crossover beer.
Bottle. Pours a large head initially that settles in and never leaves. It leaves sticky patterns all down the walls of the glass. Juicy fruit aroma. Smooth palate starts and finishes sweet. Hops remain in the back and could be a bit more to the front. Some bitterness falls in way at the end of the finish. A little sweet, but very drinkable.
Draught at the brewery. Black pour that allows some deep ruby at hte edge of a tipped glass. Thin head. The aroma is coffee with cocoa powder in the background. Reserved sweetness and little roast barley bitterness make this a smooth drinking, easy quaffing stout. Drifts dangerously close to Porter in flavor.
Sampled on tap at the brewery. Deep copper color, decent head. Dry malt aroma. The flavor is well balanced with restrained sweetness and bitterness that matches. Lightly fruity and clean.
Light brown coloured body with a small tan head. Aroma of malt and some strong spices. Light to Medium-bodied; Hoppy flavour with malt balanced well. Aftertaste smooth and fresh, lasting quite a while. Overall, a decent beer with nothing special going on, but good to try! I had this beer on draught at the Beer Sellar in Nashville, Tennessee.