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Photo by Olaf Growald
Martin House Brewing Company
Amazing Atmosphere
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Photo by Olaf Growald
Martin House Brewing Company
Amazing Quality
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Photo by Olaf Growald
Martin House Brewing Company
Amazing Taste
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Photo by Olaf Growald
Martin House Brewing Company
Amazing Selection
What’s new? That’s the question Cody Martin kept hearing from the customers who drank his beers and the bars that served them. They constantly wanted something new — so Martin House Brewing Company gave it to them, launching a deluge of microseasonals.
“We’ll make 150 recipes this year,” says 36-year-old Martin, the brewery’s co-founder and head brewer. “That’s something no one else has even come close to doing.” Every six weeks, Martin House produces five new microseasonals that are canned, kegged and distributed throughout Texas. They also invent another one or two new recipes to serve in their taproom, plus a few more test batches just for fun. “We’re really branching out and doing stuff we’ve never done before.”
Mango habanero, bread pudding, spicy tamarindo, Earl Grey and lavender — the extensive brew list is part foodie, part mad scientist and part “logistical nightmare,” Martin confides. “We’re planning two years in advance so that we can figure out the recipes, get the artwork and order the cans. Every time these beers come out on time, it’s a miracle.”
The miracle workers at Martin House include co-founders David Wedemeier (Martin’s business-savvy friend from UT Dallas) and Adam Myers (an engineering buddy with construction experience). One of Martin’s brothers works as a sales rep, and the other provides legal advice. Most of his friends work at the brewery too. “Every time I make a new friend, I hire them,” he laughs. “Everyone that works here is part of the family.”
The brewery’s mascot is the purple martin, one of the only birds that lives in family groups. Cody experienced the martin lifestyle for himself when he first arrived in Fort Worth to open the brewery. He and his wife, Anna, moved in with Wedemeier and his wife, who were already living with another couple. “There were three adult couples in this house, two dogs and a one-legged parrot,” he recalls. “It was crazy. I built a little test batch system in the back garage, and everyone would be sitting there watching ‘Game of Thrones’ in the living room at night, and I’d have beer hoses running back and forth into the fermenters inside the fridges.”
Prior to moving back to Texas, Martin had followed Anna to Latin America before getting married and buying a house in Florida. There, his interest in homebrewing finally had the space it needed to metastasize into an obsession, and he turned their garage into a brewery. “Brewing your own beer is a perfect marriage of engineering and art,” he explains. “That’s what drew me to it. There’s a lot of science and process and equipment, but you’re also using really crazy ingredients and doing whatever you can to come up with these really creative ideas.”
His job as an environmental engineer involved much of the same equipment as homebrewing, and his skills advanced quickly. Soon he felt ready to take the plunge and start a brewing company. “I told my wife — asked my wife — if I could quit my job. Luckily, she has a great job; if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have been able to quit engineering,” he admits. “She believed in me the whole time.”
Martin quit his job in Florida in November 2011, and Martin House Brewing Company sold its first beer in March 2013. “We built this place from the ground up,” Martin says, doing everything from the plumbing trenches to the research and paperwork. “It’s something we’re pretty proud of — the fact that we were able to put a business plan together and raise money so quickly when we really had no experience.”
Martin House Brewing Company is now firmly established as a cornerstone of craft beer culture in Fort Worth. Five dozen employees work at the brewery and its new taproom, which opened last summer and will host a Sour Fest on May 11. Martin has witnessed the city’s brewing scene evolve — and the competition multiply. But a spirit of cooperation still prevails. “It’s kind of like all of us against the big guys,” he says. “It’s a really personal community here. Everyone’s super proud to be from Fort Worth, and they’re super proud to have Fort Worth products. I think that really goes a long way.”
Martin’s family has multiplied as well and now includes a 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old twins. He also bikes and squeezes in ultra-marathons when he can, all while producing 150 beers per year. And there’s no slowing down, he says. “I still have 100 ideas I haven’t tried.”
The Stats
Est. 2012
# of Labels: 6
Highest ABV: 9%, The Imperial Texan
FW staff Favorite: True Love