Beer = Life
Founder Robert Lennington
You never forget your first craft beer
We founded our brewery with the idea that we wanted to brew the highest quality craft beer available. We are passionate about our craft and want to give you the best quality craft beer available in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex
Dr. Robert Lenington
Founder & Owner
Robert’s journey to a brewery began in college at Texas Tech University. There, he worked in the Biochemistry department as a lab tech for Dr. Guigen Li where he learned sterile techniques and autocatalytic organic chemistry. Robert was running the lab in the biochemistry department by the time he graduated (with Honors). He then attended UT Houston for Medical School, and he completed his Surgical Residency in Orlando, Florida. Robert remembers the first time that he tasted a craft beer and it changed everything for him. He was intrigued by the precision of the process that could create vastly different brews with fairly similar base ingredients. Soon after that, Robert began homebrewing and was known to share his homebrews at local events and gatherings. Robert has been involved in the local community since settling in Sulphur Springs and opening his medical practice. After one local event where Robert shared his homebrew, he was approached about starting a brewery in Sulphur Springs, and the rest is history.
BackStory Brewery was created on the idea that if people will listen to each other, for the time it takes to have a beer together, we will find that we agree more than we disagree.
Iris Nicole Lenington
Owner and Director of Operations
Born in Tennessee then moved basically everywhere. From Florida to Pennsylvania, to Texas. Her early years were spent like any other kid her age in the 90’s from playing Mortal Kombat, to reenacting scenes from Karate Kid with her siblings and friends in the neighborhood.. She finally grew up and obtained a BS degree in Applied Sciences with a specialization in Radiology from the University of Texas-Tyler.
Soon after her degree, she rose through the ranks of several corporate radiology departments, obtaining several different sub-specializations in many different modalities, which all lead to her becoming the director of all of radiology.
After 25 years of corporate medicine and over 100 employees that she was responsible for, Obama-care was the straw that changed everything. Soon, she noticed that medicine had nothing to do with health care any longer. The ideals that she had when she started had changed and became all about things that had nothing to do with patients, or with care. Meetings about how to schedule meetings were now the norm. The moment came when she knew she had to get out when she burnt breakfast three times for her children because she was continuously answering to a large and demanding hospital system that had its own needs.
Iris remembers her first Craft Beer, Shock Top, This experience started a lifelong exploration of different Craft Beers. The always adventurous ‘single at the time woman’ would go to different Breweries and Craft Beer places and try different beers.
Then it was a match made by the cosmos. Her Radiology directorship led her to be recruited by a hospital in Sulphur Springs. She was not sure about this move at the time. Then one day, she met another person at the hospital. A doctor at the hospital who also owned a Brewery. A struggling Brewery….which has its own BackStory…
Concurrently, at the same time that Iris was at the pinnacle in her corporate world, she was exhausted with how it had lost sight of what it was like to truly be a servant of the True King within the structure of the business of medicine. It was at this time that the universe opened a new way to her. The only time that people are real, is when they have a beer and talk. This is what Iris has known for a long time, that people get real when they spend time and lose their ego. This is the magic of Craft Beer. Sip, enjoy, laugh, tell your BackStory, repeat. You cannot do that with ‘regular’ beer.
Soon, her love of community and service made her the director of BackStory Brewery, Her relationship with her now-husband prepared her for as she says… “different squirrels” of the Craft Beer world, and the brewery would not be here today without her(which itself is another BackStory).