Marine Corps veteran brews up new calling with Hi Sign Brewing

Marine Corps veteran Mark Phillippe just opened one of Austin’s newest breweries thanks in part to the advice of two close friends and mentors who have made careers through the local beverage industry.

He is the founder of Hi Sign Brewing, which quietly opened this month just north of the intersection of U.S. 183 and Texas 71 and plans to celebrate a grand opening in mid-March during South by Southwest. The brewery, in a 6,600-squarefoot warehouse space that includes an airy taproom, an automated brewhouse and a private events room, is the result of seven years of Phillippe’s hard work.

After a deployment to Afghanistan and nearly four full years in the military, he needed to find a new career — and decided, after many talks with Tito’s Handmade Vodka founder Tito Beveridge and Sweet Leaf Tea and Deep Eddy Vodka founder Clayton Christopher, that owning a brewery in Austin would bring him the most satisfaction.

“It seemed like a career you were passionate about wasn’t about the money,” he said. “I’d see them and how much they were enjoying their lives, and it was because they’d found something they had a lot of passion for.”

Although Christopher and Beveridge both found their fortunes through vodka, Phillippe is banking on beer because of a love for the fermented beverage that he discovered at his family’s Montana cabin in the early