New Year’s Eve may have brought celebrations across the country, but one New Braunfels taproom had sad news as it permanently closed its taps to end 2024. The dream of craft beer might be over but the memories still flow for the owner.
OffRhodes Craft Beer Station closed its doors on December 31, 2024, but co-owner Christopher Rhodes has had time to reflect on the reasons the business didn’t work and saw it in a different perspective.
“We created a wonderful group of community, friends and relationships that I will cherish,” Rhodes said to MySA. “We created friendships. I feel like they treated us like we were their Cheers, we were their home bar, which felt really good.”
Rhodes looked up how many years the television show Cheers was on the air. Six. OffRhodes Craft Beer Station lasted seven years in New Braunfels.
“I was able to create something, even though we did fail in a financial standing, we did something greater than ourselves,” Rhodes said. “All we really hoped was to have some impact, and we did.”
Former guests were asking if OffRhodes would relocate, but Rhodes clarified that the craft beer station is permanently closed.
The store opened in September 2017 across the road from the Wurstfest fairgrounds, but eventually moved a few years later to a better downtown location.
Rhodes originally wanted to bring a craft beer-focused beer garden to New Braunfels to the locals because he believed that’s what they wanted. He thought not carrying liquor or “cheap beer options” would help them corner the craft beer market in the area.
The small-town business turned a profit for its first three years until COVID-19 restrictions were implemented. Inflation rising didn’t help OffRhodes either and finally led to the closure.
“I needed to get the stress off my shoulder. It was hurting us financially where we could barely survive. January is typically your worst month, especially for bars, but the fact was, we were having Januarys ever single month of the year,” Rhodes said. “We put so much money in the last few years that I got to a point where I was exhausted just dumping money into something that wasn’t showing growth.”
Rhodes has decide to leave the hospitality field and found his way into the music scene as the manager for a local artist Jay Kline, so while Rhodes won’t be serving up craft brews, he could be bringing sweet tunes to the Hill Country.