TailGate Brewery has purchased Yazoo Brewing Company's entire production facility and taproom on a 6.5-acre campus at 900 River Bluff Drive in Madison, with founder Wesley Keegan offering jobs to the whole Yazoo crew, including co-founder Linus Hall. The deal, which took effect immediately, marks a major consolidation between two of Middle Tennessee's best-known craft beer names, and Yazoo's lineup of beers will keep rolling off the same 40-barrel brewhouse for distribution through R.S. Lipman.
The acquisition was reported by the Nashville Scene, which detailed how the Madison site will now serve as TailGate's primary brewing hub even as TailGate's original West Nashville headquarters remains a working brewery with its taproom staying open. According to the Scene, TailGate will also bring its pizza kitchen program to the Madison location, while the GrillShack fries-and-burgers operation that previously ran out of the facility is moving out, continuing instead at its East Nashville and Germantown locations. Keegan told the outlet that TailGate had simply outgrown its existing capacity and needed more room to brew.
TailGate plans to put the newly acquired 40-barrel system to work expanding its own beer portfolio alongside its contract brewing business, which includes continuing to produce beer for the Yazoo brand, according to Brewbound. Both brands already share a distributor in R.S. Lipman, a logistics overlap that helps explain why folding Yazoo into TailGate's operation was a relatively smooth fit. The Madison site will become TailGate's ninth taproom location in Middle Tennessee, adding to a footprint that included Murfreesboro, TailGate's latest location as of July 2024.
A Brewing Pioneer Finds New Ownership
Yazoo's roots run deep in Nashville's modern beer history. Co-founded in 2003 by Linus and Lila Hall inside the city's historic Marathon Motor Works building, Yazoo was Nashville's first production brewery since Prohibition, according to Yazoo Brewing Company. The brewery later relocated to The Gulch in 2010 before settling into its Madison campus in 2019, a trajectory that tracks the broader arc of Nashville's craft beer scene maturing from a scrappy startup culture into an established regional industry.
Keegan called Hall and Yazoo legends in both the national and Tennessee craft beer communities, saying the pair had inspired TailGate and that his company was proud to carry on making Yazoo beer, per the Nashville Scene's reporting. Hall, who will oversee production and sales of Yazoo's beer line going forward, said he and Lila were beginning a new chapter after 23 years running the company. He added that the same people who have worked at Yazoo for years will keep brewing its beer, with opportunities to grow alongside TailGate, and said he was looking forward to working with TailGate to improve the brewery as both a workplace and a gathering place.
TailGate's Rapid Rise From a Moose Lodge
TailGate's own growth story has been fast by any measure. Founder Wesley Keegan opened the brewery in West Nashville in October 2014 inside a converted former Moose Lodge, starting with just a 3-barrel system and no outside investors, according to Forbes. Keegan has retained full sole ownership of the company as it has expanded into a regional operation now employing more than 250 people.
The Madison purchase follows another expansion just last year, when TailGate doubled production capacity at its West Nashville headquarters by installing a 30-barrel brewhouse and expanding cellar capacity to 1,100 barrels, a move driven by growing demand for its beer, cider, and hemp-derived THC sparkling waters, as reported by Craft Brewing Business. Forbes notes that TailGate also provides 100 percent employer-paid healthcare premiums, competitive wages, and a 401(k) match, benefits that have earned it recognition as a Tennessee Top Workplace and that could help smooth the transition for former Yazoo employees joining the company.
Expansion Amid a Shrinking National Market
TailGate's growth stands in contrast to a tougher national picture for independent craft brewers. U.S. craft beer production volume fell 1.0 percent in 2023 alongside a record 409 brewery closures nationwide, per Forbes' reporting.
TailGate's flagship Orange wheat ale is an award-winning core beer, part of the lineup the company is looking to scale with the added Madison capacity.
Financial terms of the TailGate-Yazoo transaction were not disclosed. Keegan said the company was grateful for community support as it continues growing in Tennessee, and the transition between the two breweries is already underway.
