Ballast Point Closes One Door And Opens Another

Ballast Point Brewing announced both good and bad news Tuesday, and your reaction may depend heavily on where you live. If you’re a fan of the San Diego-based brewery in the Midwest, you’ll likely be disappointed to learn that the Chicago brewpub that was supposed to close just temporarily in October because of COVID-19 will not reopen. On the upside, Northern California craft beer drinkers should be pleased to discover that the company is restarting construction on the never-opened San Francisco location that got mothballed by its previous owner in 2019. 

“We love Chicago and will remain invested in the region with Kings & Convicts, but have decided it’s in the best interest of Ballast Point and its long-term success to focus on our roots in San Diego and California as a whole,” said Brendan Watters, CEO of Ballast Point and Kings & Convicts, the Illinois-born brewery that shocked the beer world by buying Ballast from megalithic alcohol conglomerate Constellation

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just before the pandemic. “The ability to highlight our products in a tasting room across from a world-class entertainment facility and as part of an incredible development in San Francisco aligns well with our vision for Ballast Point.” 

The 12,000 sq. ft. taproom and kitchen joins an outpost of Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing that opened last fall in the Mission Bay district of San Francisco, a renovated industrial yard by the San Francisco Bay that now gleams with dazzling condos, landmark life-sciences companies and, most notably, the NBA’s new Chase Arena. In other positive beer developments in the city, the Danish craft brewery Mikkeller, which closed and put its SoMa neighborhood brewpub up for sale last year, has done an about face by renovating the interior and scheduling its reopening for the next few weeks.

Though COVID-19 caused some breweries to call off plans to build major new facilities in distant markets, as is the case with Boston’s Night Shift Brewing’s aborted Philadelphia facility, a few others are moving forward. Georgia’s Creature Comforts will open a Los Angeles outpost, and Delaware’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewery is taking advantage of its purchase by Boston Beer

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(BBC) to set up a shop in BBC’s now-closed Concrete Beach space in Miami. Brooklyn’s Other Half Brewing successfully opened a spot in Washington, D.C. in October. 

And though Mikkeller and Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned Goose Island Brewery and 10 Barrel Brewing all permanently closed remote brewpubs in coastal big cities last year, the pandemic may have hit large projects in the middle of the country harder: Northern California’s Lagunitas Brewing (owned by Heineken) closed its popular Chicago brewpub, and Scotland’s BrewDog closed two of its Ohio pubs. Both breweries say the closures are temporary. Meanwhile, Indiana’s Three Floyds Brewing, Denver’s Great Divide Brewing and Minneapolis’ Surly Brewing each closed at least one in-market eatery. 

Ballast Point’s upcoming San Francisco spot joins five existing brewery taprooms in Southern California. Constellation broke ground on the northern site in 2018 but halted construction in 2019 before selling to Kings & Convicts the following year.