About Wild Bunch Brewery

Flame Brewed, Fresh Beer

Our beer is brewed in the old-fashioned way, with hand tuning of the flames and hand stirring of the mash.

The brewhouse is based on the eternal force of nature, gravity, to help with the flow and transfer of the wort during the brewing process. This allows for less agitation of the wort and helps with the clarity of the final product.

We use direct flame heating, which leads to some maillard reactions during the boil, and results in some wonderful caramelly and complex flavors that enhance the beer drinking experience.

Our Story

Wild Bunch Brewing Co. was founded in 2013 by Charlie Sullivan and Larry Laviolette. The location of the brewery was originally in the lovely town of LaGrange, Texas. In 2016, Jarle Lillemoen, a home-brewer, industrial distiller, and Ph.D. biochemist, came upon the fact that Wild Bunch Brewing Co. had no brewer at the moment. He applied for the job. After a few months of making impressive home-brew batches of different IPAs and serving them to Larry and Charlie, he got the job, and thought, “I have achieved Beer-vana.”

We needed to build a brewhouse and timing was on our side. The old farmhouse located just down the road from our house was up for rent and had an old barn with it. That old barn was where we decided to build the brewhouse. But money… it takes a lot of money to build a brewery!

Jarle had a good friend, Jeremiah Jarvis, whom he met doing land conservation work, and also James Caras, Ph.D. a home-brewer, whom Jarle knew because they went through the same program in University of Texas chemistry department, and who had successfully run and sold a business, so he had a little extra money to get into the business of brewing and selling beer.

Between investments from Jeremiah, Charlie, James, and Jarle’s time (plus help from Adam Smith, stainless welding, and Abi Molnar, steel welding), we managed to build a self-designed, very classic, gravity-fed 3bbl (93 gallon) brewhouse. We started brewing beer and fermenting it in the back room of the old farmhouse in stainless steel 55-gallon drums. The process of learning how to brew good beer with that system took a while, so quite a few of those early batches ended up going back to mother nature.

As soon as the beer was good, Jarle decided it was time to start selling the beer. He went out to start selling the beer in liquor stores, bars, and grocery stores. He was also hand-bottling the beers, with a self-built bottling line.

After about a year, we refurbished the old farmhouse and turned it into a primitive taproom. Best idea ever! The Wild Bunch taproom opened its doors in February 2018.

Even though the taproom was primitive, and the farmhouse was old and not in the greatest shape, some adventurous souls started coming out to drink Wild Bunch beer. And some of them came back! And some of them came back again and again. And some of them started making suggestions about how to “improve” the place. And Jarle and co. started improving the place. And we haven’t stopped improving it since. The place was originally built in the 1950s, so it can always use a lot of TLC.

Fast forward a few years, we have been brewing on that same gravity-fed brewhouse for 7 years. The beers are consistently decent, and some batches are amazing. We are moving on from the hand-built bottling system to a better one, and our 55-gallon drums are slowly getting replaced with actual conical, jacketed fermenters!

We are only getting started.

“If you ain’t making the best beer you know how, what are you doing?”

— Jarle Lillemoen

Our Team

The People Who Make the Beer

Jarle Lillemoen
Brewmaster & Co-Owner

Ryter Baird
Brewer

Nathan Hinds
Assistant Brewer

Abi Molnar
Assistant Brewer


  • Brewmaster & Co-Owner

    Originally from Norway, Jarle is the primus motor of Wild Bunch. He is very stubborn, and also self-directed. It is difficult to re-direct him. He designed and built all the equipment and infrastructure beyond the original barn and farmhouse. He files the paperwork and keeps up with most of the stuff.


  • Brewer

    Ryter helps brew the beer. He showed up at Wild Bunch with his parents back in 2020. He started off making and serving food, and then decided he wanted to learn how to brew beer. Jarle is thankful for the help because brewing beer is really a two-person job at Wild Bunch.


  • Assistant Brewer

    Nathan is a neighbor to Wild Bunch, has been a home-brewer for years, and had a particularly good Pale Kölsch recipe that he shared with Jarle. Jarle liked it and they decided to brew it. It is known as the Big Bad.


  • Assistant Brewer

    Abi has been a good friend to Jarle since before the brewery became a concrete thing. He has brewed quite a bit of beer in the past, and a lot of it is of the less conventional types, utilizing a lot of herbs and such in the brewing process. Abi is also an accomplished welder, and she built the steel rack upon which the gravity-fed brewing system rests.

The People Who Make the Food

Margy Moore
Head Chef & Co-Owner

Tom Hardies
Head BBQ

Damon Fondulis
Fire Cooker II


  • Head Chef & Co-Owner

    Margy has a long history of working in kitchens and restaurants around the Austin and Caldwell County area. We are lucky to have her cooking and managing the Wild Bunch Brewing Co. kitchen.


  • Head BBQ

    Tom loves cooking anything that involves having a fire. He will set up occasionally to cook on the grill or use the burners to cook seafood for our bigger events. Tom rarely cooks alone, so he usually brings along a friend or two to get the food cooked up right. Like for example: Damon Fondulis.


  • Fire cooker II

    Damon has been coming out to drink beer at Wild Bunch for years. He is always doing nice things for us, like making handmade wood signs and such. But he is very good at cooking and serving many happy customers.

The People Who Serve the Beer

Bill Patterson

Nathan Hinds

Tom Hardies

Jarle Lillemoen


  • Jarle is usually in a good and talkative mood in the taproom. If you want to hear about beer and process, or chemistry, be careful what you wish for.


  • Tom is an attentive bartender who loves to travel, cook food, and talk about how the beer tastes.


  • Bill is here to serve you. He does not intrude, but he is always paying attention and making sure you are taken care of.


  • Nathan is a one-man band. He can have an entire conversation with himself behind the bar if you let him.

Our Owners

Charlie Sullivan

Larry Laviolette

Tom Lillemoen

James Caras, Ph.D.


  • Esq. Founder & Co-Owner

    Charlie has been here since the very beginning of the brewery. He is solid and never waivers in his support of the endeavor. Charlie’s wife, Ann, is also a solid believer in what Wild Bunch can be, and also what we are and have been.


  • Larry is an early founder of the brewery. He has spent a large amount of time driving around and delivering beer and such, while also financially supporting the brewery in the early days.


  • Early co-owner. Tom is Jarle’s elder brother. He lives in Norway, so he doesn’t get to drink Wild Bunch beer as often as he should. But when he does come to Texas, he enjoys drinking Wild Bunch beer.


  • James saw the potential in the brewery and helped get the first version of the brewery going. He also helped us develop a realistic business model to use as a goal.

Jeremiah Jarvis

Craig Hunter

DA Rice

Callie and Jarle Lillemoen


  • Jeremiah saw the potential in the brewery and was instrumental in the earliest phases of setting up the brewery. He loves the darker beers and likes to sit on his expansive wooden porch and drink some of that while talking about the things that are interesting at the moment.


  • Craig has been with the brewery since early on, when the actualities were just potentialities. He helped to get the materials together for the very first slab that our brewhouse is set upon.


  • DA is solid in the brewery, and he sees the vision of what the brewery can be. He spends a lot of time in West Texas, so he also does not get to drink as much Wild Bunch beer as he ought.


  • Jarle is the brewmaster and does more work around the brewery than anybody else.

Bill and Beverly Paterson

Jared Paterson

Tom and Andrea Hardies

Margy Moore and Dennis Alexander


  • Bill and Beverly are local cattle ranchers and beer drinkers who came to the brewery years ago and got involved in the earlier phases of expansion. A brewery must always expand. They continue to show up to help with construction, floor refinishing, and any old project that we deem necessary enough to perform.


  • Family with Bill and Beverly. He has helped with quite a bit of construction around the brewery.


  • Tom and Andrea started out as beer drinkers, and then Tom started helping out with running the bar and cooking some food from time to time. Then, when Wild Bunch opened up for new ownership to upgrade the fermentation and packaging equipment, they became owners of the brewery.


  • Dennis and Margy are local patrons who decided to join in ownership of the brewery. Margy runs the kitchen. Dennis has helped with a lot of construction projects, provides solid emotional support, and helps getting the promo going.

Kelley and Cody Baird

Edie Clark and John Schneider


  • John and Edie are local beer drinkers who enjoy coming to the brewery to enjoy what Wild Bunch has to offer. They decided to become owners of the brewery during the most recent expansion. They are good to have on board, and because of them, we will reach the finish line.


  • It took a lot of convincing to get them to join, but it was well worth it. Cody and Kelley are nearby neighbors to our brewery, and they found out about Wild Bunch during the COVID lockdown period, when we were selling growlers out of the window. We have since become fast friends, and the whole Baird family is friends of the Wild Bunch Brewing Co.