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Photo by Olaf Growald
Hopfusion Ale Works
Original Taste
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Photo by Olaf Growald
Hopfusion Ale Works
Original Style
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Photo by Olaf Growald
Hopfusion Ale Works
Original Flavors
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Photo by Olaf Growald
Hopfusion Ale Works
Original Brew
Music blasts over the picnic tables, bicycles hang from the ceiling and graffiti art colors the walls at HopFusion Ale Works. A giant projection screen covers one end of the taproom next to several shelves of board games. Guys with beards wander up to the bar to try the banana pudding brew, a silky golden beer with whipped cream and crushed vanilla wafers on the rim. Girlfriends sip multicolored flights of beer on the patio and play Connect Four.
“It’s all about the experience,” says Macy Moore, who co-founded the brewery with his friend, Matt Hill. “It’s everything else around the beer that matters to us — friends and dogs and music and art. That’s what Matt and I talked about the very first night.”
Once upon a late-night bike ride in 2015, Moore and Hill sparked the idea of opening up a brewery during a refreshment stop at Malone’s Pub. “It was a very naïve moment,” Moore laughs. “We thought we were pretty informed on what it would take … but we had no idea what the statement ‘let’s open up a brewery’ would actually mean. It was very, very hard.” Both of the bicyclists had been homebrewing for years. At first, brewing was a mystery to Moore. “I thought it was like a black science, like some magic … I heard that people were homebrewing in their bathtubs — this is years and years ago — and I didn’t know what the hell that meant. I thought it sounded really nasty.”
But homebrewing just clicked for Moore, who likens the skill to smoking meat. “It takes a lot of prep, time, patience and knowing what it’s going to be at the very end, even though that’s not what it is at the beginning. When I smoke meat, it feels like it’s the same process,” he says. “So, if you’re a good barbecuer, a good smoker, you probably could make really good beer.”
Not long after that fateful night, RadioShack laid off Moore after 23 years at his job in downtown Fort Worth. Moore and Hill kicked their plans into high gear. They helped at local breweries, including Martin House and Collective Brewing, and looked for a space in the perfect location — just a bike ride away from their homes. Craft beer and bike riding are undeniably linked for Moore. “They come from the same place for me,” he says. It’s a place centered around friends and community, around slowing down and connecting with the true vibe of the city. “It’s liberating.”
The two bicyclists found “an old run-down, horrible warehouse” on the Southside for their brewery. “When we got here, it was all barbed wire and fences, with concertina wire on the top all the way around,” Moore recalls. “It was still pretty rough to be here at night.” It took about two years to transform the space into a brewery. They incorporated several elements of the site’s original character, including street art style and that wire-topped fence, which now separates the taproom and the brewery.
“About 95 percent of it was done by us and a bunch of friends,” reveals Moore. Hill, who has experience as a mechanic and welder, created the bar and all the metalwork. Moore added most of the taproom’s graffiti, drawing from his art school background in graphic design. “I love to paint,” he confides. “I’m a wannabe modern impressionistic painter … I love that freedom.”
An artist at heart, Moore takes a novel approach to inventing new recipes at the brewery. “I think about the color of the beer first. That to me is really, really important. You taste food visually, and beer is no different to me.”
But Moore’s not the only one who’s coming up with recipes. Unlike most breweries, HopFusion doesn’t have a brewmaster. Brewmasters typically “dictate the style or recipe that’s going to be created, and then the brewers go create that. Here we don’t do that … everybody has an input,” he explains. “Everyone has their own style that they like to brew or drink,” from the bartenders to the workers in the back. Even Moore and Hill have very different tastes in beer: light and fruity versus dark and strong. “It keeps things really diverse … I think that’s very unique, and that makes us what we are.”
This fusion of different ideas and the connection of different people form the core of the brewery’s identity. “Craft beer for us is the people that work here, who are frickin’ amazing,” Moore says. “They care about this place almost as much as we do … they’re the biggest part of it.” Taproom guests are connected too; the brewery’s “open kitchen” design reveals the beer chefs at work in the back — if they’re not already in the bar pouring pints. “In most cases, the person telling you about that beer is the person who made that beer.”
Many times, it’s Moore himself. And some of his favorite customers are the ones who say they don’t like beer. “I absolutely love that … I’ll take them to the end of the bar, and we’ll go through everything. I’ll take them in the back and show them how we make it.” He lines up dozens of samples and mixes beers together until they find the right style. “We’ll figure out what works … that to me is the coolest thing.”
The taproom launches a new limited-release brew every Thursday, like the banana pudding beer (a collaboration between HopFusion, Martin House, Ellerbe Fine Foods and the Fort Worth Food & Wine Festival). On Fridays and Saturdays, beer drinkers will find live music and a new infusion to try. From beer yoga to board game nights and kettlebell workouts to karaoke, there’s always something going on at this Southside hangout. That includes the rapid growth of their neighborhood, where dozens of new businesses are opening up — including new bars and breweries.
“We welcome that. We help them,” Moore says. “Beer begets beer. Have a beer here, walk up the street, have a beer, walk over to Collective, have a beer, go to Rahr … it’s a destination.” Even more than a destination, Fort Worth’s craft beer scene is a community and a home for Macy Moore. “It’s my world.”
The Stats
Est. 2015
# of Labels: 6
Highest ABV: 8.99%, Coco Añejo
fw staff Favorite: Feisty Redhead