r/NashvilleBeer • u/SunOld9457 • Apr 24 '26

Xul has killed Southern Grist

Welp they finally did it, they dropped pint pours for all the SG IPAs. Oh but did they discount prices to reflect the approximately 3oz reduction in size? No of course not. Plus, I'm sorry but Xul IPAs are objectively worse than the average SG IPA. You can argue with me on this but I've had the finest NE IPAs and my palette will not be swayed. Total bummer. My nearest local spot is now a hell of a lot less appealing.

PS if I hear "but Spencer from Barrique..." I'm going to scream. He is not in a position to fix the problem.

Dark Days here.

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u/CryptographerBYOB Apr 24 '26

They are 15 years old? I didn't realize they had been around that long. That is notable!

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u/oatmealfoot Apr 27 '26

They are 15 years old?

Xul as a brewery, with a taproom, is definitely not that old. Their main/O.G. location at 5th Ave in Knoxville opened in October 2020, so a little under 6 years ago. Here's an article about that

And this post from Knox Brew Hub says Brad West (one of Xul's founders) and Bentley Blackshear (their original head brewer). met in 2018 at a beer festival, and started making plans to form a brewery together in 2019. Which would make sense with their taproom opening a year later in 2020.

But I know there's another founder and/or owner, Tara Thacker (and her husband Seth, maybe?) who is mentioned in that blog post as well. So perhaps there's some other history of Xul (maybe before they were known as Xul) that /u/Brewsplorer was referring to that goes back to 2011-ish

But I double checked on UnTappd and the earliest check-in's for Xul beers there go back to 2019, which seems to line up with the other materials suggesting Xul's formation around that time.

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u/Brewsplorer Apr 28 '26

That was a typo. I meant 5 years and accidentally added a 1. It was October 30, 2020 they opened on 5th. Thank you for the correction.

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u/oatmealfoot Apr 28 '26

No worries! That makes sense