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The Cardinal's Song
A veteran's long-held dream, a bird with twenty-eight songs, and a brewhouse built to bring Boerne together.
Twenty-eight songs.
The northern cardinal carries something remarkable in its small red body — a repertoire of roughly twenty-eight distinct songs.
It's a bird many Texans feel a quiet kinship with — a flash of red against the live oaks, a familiar voice in the Hill Country morning. Range, craft, and a deep sense of place, all in one small singer.
That idea became everything: our name, the number of taps on our wall, and our namesake Belgian tripel — Chant Du Cardinal, the song of the cardinal itself.
The Founder
A reckoning, and a dream.
Founder Don Kretz spent a career in the defense and intelligence world — and, all the while, a longtime home brewer with a quieter dream running underneath it.
At a natural turning point in his life, he describes what came next as a "reckoning." He finally said the dream out loud — a real business, a true local gathering place, a brewery. The people around him answered without hesitation: "You need to do this. Let us know how we can support you."
So he did. 28 Songs is veteran-owned, independent, and built on exactly that kind of encouragement — the belief that a town deserves a place that belongs to it.
The Place
Chosen by Boerne.
Before a single wall went up, the search for the right spot took six months — and conversations with nearly 400 locals about what they actually wanted from a neighborhood brewhouse.
The answer led here: 110 Market Avenue, in the Main & Market development just north of the Hill Country Mile. Less traffic. More parking. Room for people to make it their own.
"A local place to come to" — that was the brief. Boerne helped write it.
The Brewer
Simple recipes, done right.
Head brewer Rob Velez brings a Hill Country brewing résumé that runs through Tusculum Brewing and Dodging Duck Brewhaus before landing on our five-barrel system.
His philosophy is refreshingly direct: "We want to have fun, experiment, and showcase some of the more interesting flavor profiles produced by simple recipes. Sometimes, simple is actually better."
That's why the wall is always changing — a dependable core lineup beside a steady rotation of small-batch brews, all poured a few steps from where they're made.
“Nothing brings people together like good beer.”
Painted on our wall — and the whole point of the place.
Come be part
of the story.
Veteran-owned, Boerne-rooted, and always glad you stopped in.
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