Reincarnating Breweries
The news broke last week that 10 Barrel’s longtime head brewer Whitney Burnside would launch Grand Fir with her husband in the same location of the recently closed West Coast Grocery. The announcement came not long after Living Haus had its launch in the former site of Modern Times, itself re-using the Common’s old place. All of this reminded me of something Brewers Association economist Bart Watson wrote almost three years ago:
“A question popped into my head this morning: what % of closed brewery locations get a new brewery in that location? Right now - it looks like 20-25%.”
He went on to mention that four cities were higher than the national average, including Portland. It seems like the trend is accelerating here since he wrote that at the end of 2019.
I count four recent reincarnations, and that’s just from memory:
Living Haus. The project of brewers Conrad Andrus, Mat Sandoval, and Gavin Lord, this one was beyond tuenkey. Conrad and Mat already worked there for Modern Times, so the whole brewery and building was easy to convert immediately. As a bonus, it has a central location not far from a half dozen other breweries, including:
Ecliptic Moon Room. This was the former Base Camp site, and it too was purpose-built as a brewery in an old inner-eastside brewery. (Staffing shortages have temporary closed the taproom.) It was all ready for reincarnation. Then, just a quarter-mile away:
Grand Fir. West Coast Grocery was in a great location—just across the street from Revolution Hall, a major music venue, amid the densely-populated Buckman neighborhood of inner Southeast. It did have one notable downside. Much of the most attractive seating was up a set of stairs and out of street view. The place could have been fairly full but looked empty. It’s also a tight space, particularly in the wee brewery. We’ll see what Whitney and Doug have planned. And, not far from there is:
Fracture Brewing. The fourth brewery in the inner Eastside, Fracture has revived the former Burnside Brewing location—which Mikkeller later briefly inhabited. The project of Tomas Sluiter, Darren Provenzano, and Ny Lee, it’s already open, but has yet to open a taproom there. When you approach the brewery, you can still see the blacked-out letters spelling Burnside on the silo out front.
All of this makes total sense. Breweries have a way of outliving the companies that installed them. When I started getting into beer, I was charmed to learn that Fuller’s Chiswick brewery in London went by the name “the Griffin Brewery.” That name predates Fuller’s by 29 years, and is proudly featured on packaging and elsewhere. Americans are slowly edging toward that convention as they open secondary brewing sites, though many have failed to seize the opportunity to give them proper names, usually choosing the city instead. One exception is Fort George, who has three named brewhouses. (Someone should grab “Phoenix Brewery” for one of these new ones—I would!)
Breweries require a bunch of stuff regular businesses don’t, up to and including equipment like grain silos. Once a company has spent the time and money to retrofit a brewery and get it permitted with the municipal authorities, it makes a mighty big target for breweries looking for a new space. The city of Portland has completely fallen apart in terms of doing all the permits and inspections for companies doing this work from scratch—it can literally take years—so it’s no surprise they’re getting recycled.
I’m using this post to bookmark the trend. I assume it will only become a more pronounced phenomenon as old breweries depart, creating a great opportunity for new ones to sweep in and—in the language Fuller’s used to describe acquiring the Griffin name—snaffle them up. Feel free to add knowledge of similar stuff happening in your city.