Hoppy Days

Like his day job playing Dean Winchester on Supernatural, Jensen Ackles’ passion project—a new microbrewery and tap room—is a family business.

- Yolanda Crous

NOT EVERYBODY CAN turn their hobby into a successful side hustle. But Jensen Ackles, who’s currently in the middle of his 14th season on The CW’s hit thriller series Supernatural, did just that last winter when he opened the Family Business Beer Co., a destination brewery set on a horse ranch just outside Austin.

Ackles caught the craft-brew bug about eight years ago when his brother-in-law, Gino Graul, came to stay in his guest house in Los Angeles. “He and I both got into the craft scene and said, ‘We should make beer.’ And so we did. And it was terrible,” laughs Ackles. “But we weren’t discouraged.” As their beer got better, their plans got bigger. “We had a pipe dream of making enough beer to supply our friends and family, and maybe even, who knows, to sell to other people,” he says.

Graul took some beer-making classes at the University of California, Davis and Chicago’s Siebel Institute. Meanwhile, Ackles and his wife, Danneel, had their first child and started talking about packing up and leaving Los Angeles. “We were thinking about where to plant our roots. Austin kept coming up,” says Ackles, a Texas native. “We moved, and Gino ended up following us, which kept the dream alive.”