On February 8, more than a thousand brewery owners, brewmasters, marketers, and distributors came to Austin for the Texas Craft Brewers Guild annual meeting and awards ceremony. After a day of panels, networking, and tastings, industry leaders were ready to celebrate. A DJ spun tracks while beers from across the state flowed through the events center at the Circuit of the Americas, and each winning brewery had its moment onstage to bask in raucous adulation. Yet despite the tipsy camaraderie, there are troubling signs for Texas’s beer scene, which includes more than four hundred craft breweries and an economic impact of more than $5.25 billion.In 2024, more breweries closed than opened for the first time in decades, not only in Texas but throughout the country. In the…