Bearded Iris Brewing says its original Germantown tasting room in Nashville will pour its final pint on Dec. 5. Axios Nashville, in a Nov. 13 report by Nate Rau, said the brewery announced the closing on Thursday, Nov. 12, and that its beers will continue to be available in stores, now brewed by Wiseacre.
Axios attributed the decision to an Instagram post, quoting the brewery: “Recent changes in rent rates and property taxes have made it untenable for us to continue operating a taproom here.” We were not able to read that Instagram post directly. As of Nov. 13, the Germantown page on the Bearded Iris site was still live, still described 101 Van Buren St. as the original location and “main production facility,” and still listed hours (Monday through Thursday, 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, noon to 10 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 8 p.m.). Both of the brewery’s taprooms are described there as cashless. The site had not been updated with a closing notice.
Why Bearded Iris is leaving Germantown
Axios is the only Nov. 13 news source we found for the Dec. 5 date. The point that the beers will now be “brewed by Wiseacre and only available in stores” is Axios’s reporting, not a first-party statement we captured from the brewery website. The Germantown room, at 101 Van Buren St., Nashville, TN 37208, has been the company’s home base since Bearded Iris was founded there in 2014 by Kavon Togrye, Paul Vaughn, and Matt Miller. The brewery’s own location page still invites guests to watch beer being brewed and packaged, or to take a pint out to the patio after a run or ride on the Nashville Greenway. Axios notes that Homestyle is the staple beer, and that the brewery was early to the hazy IPA wave. Its year-round beers also include Pep Talk lager and Wavecraze Tropical IPA.
Wiseacre’s 2025 purchase, and the Charlotte Avenue shutdown
The retail-only future for those beers follows last year’s sale. In late July 2025, The Nashville Post reported that Memphis-based Wiseacre Brewing, via Abel Brewing LLC, had applied for Metro Beer Board permits for a “change of ownership” at both the Sylvan Supply location at 4101 Charlotte Ave. and the Germantown taproom. What Now Nashville likewise reported the sale through those beer-board filings. Wiseacre was founded in 2013 by brothers Davin and Kellan Bartosch. Beer Street Journal wrote that financial terms were not disclosed, and that the deal was not described as involving Scofflaw Brewing.
BeerAlien has followed Wiseacre’s growth for years, including the 40,000-square-foot downtown Memphis brewery and taproom that opened in 2020, the later launches of Tiny Bomb into Texas and Wiseacre beer into Arizona, and the 2023 promotion of Amanda Thompson to COO as the brewery entered Central and South Florida.
The Charlotte Avenue room did not survive the sale for long. Axios says that location closed after the acquisition. Contemporary coverage from September 2025, including Memphis Beer Blog, said the Sylvan Supply taproom at 4101 Charlotte Ave. would close on Sept. 26, 2025.
One smaller timeline point is unsettled. Axios says Bearded Iris joined a brewery collective called IndieBrew in 2022. Beer Street Journal’s 2025 acquisition story said the brewery joined IndieBrew in December 2021, and that IndieBrew was founded by Atlanta’s Scofflaw in October 2021. We are leaving both dates on the record rather than treating a single year as settled.
If the Dec. 5 date holds, Bearded Iris will leave its last Nashville taproom just over a year after Charlotte Avenue went dark, with the beers themselves still headed to store shelves under Wiseacre. Anyone planning a last pint should confirm hours directly with Bearded Iris before making the trip, since the website has not yet caught up with the Axios report.
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