Culmination Brewing, 2015-2025

Culmination Brewing, one of those little-breweries-that-could, finally couldn’t:

The Time Has Come to Say Goodbye

We never fully recovered from the financial challenges that COVID brought us despite Herculean efforts by our incredible staff and our amazing brewers Daniel Hughes and Andy Scott…. Our last day will be Saturday February 15th.

A little five-barrel brewery with a small taproom in a leafy but slightly hidden neighborhood, Culmination won early praise for both its IPAs as well as its traditional styles and historical recreations. It wasn’t just an interesting brewery, but a very good one, too, appearing either on or just off my Best Portland Breweries list throughout the years. It predicted the return to more traditional beers, and always had good lagers on (as well as saisons—until even Culmination couldn’t sell them). They evolved well with the times, establishing a rep as one of the breweries making the most accomplished hazies in town. So this isn’t the story of an insignificant brewery passing from the margins.

This is the second time closure approached. In 2023, Culmination hinted the end was near—but they scrambled to raise money and brought in a longtime associate of the brewery to help run it. A longer, well-reported piece at the New School describes what happened next. The brewery managed to raise $400,000 for equipment, but hadn’t been paying back the debt, resulting in the closure. It’s not totally clear how well-managed the brewery was in its last years, and Ezra Johnson-Greenough describes some angry investors. It’s never really possible to look in from the outside and understand all the factors that led to a given closure, and they must all leave unhappy investors in their wake.

But backing up, Culmination does offer an interesting case study in American brewing. It opened in that last great explosion of activity, which in Portland arrived a bit earlier than elsewhere—say between 2010 and 2016. Prior to that period, any new brewery opening was a major news item. The attention breweries received in the wayback gave them a fair amount of runway to command the attention they would need for a successful launch. If they proved to be good, they had an opportunity to grow. The mid-teens glut of breweries made launches more anonymous affairs, and they had to work much harder to distinguish themselves and attract an audience. Culmination was a standout in the group that opened in this period. It had excellent brewers and was doing interesting stuff. Nevertheless, it didn’t break out of the pack and hit a low plateau.

Another factor was distribution. Culmination signed on with General Distributing, a small company that had built a book with these smaller breweries. In 2018, however, General sold to Columbia. It is by far the largest distributor in the region, representing dozens of breweries. That was a challenge for both Columbia and their new acquisitions—almost all of whom would fail in the coming years. Culmination survived, but this was another one of those bumps in the road that made it hard for a little brewery to grow and flourish. As routes to market become narrower and the number of retail slots fewer, it’s harder for smaller breweries to find a stable customer base.

It’s always sad when a good brewery is forced to close before its time, but we should still think of Culmination as a success. Any business that manages to survive a decade is doing something right. That decade was a distinguished one, marked by a lot of good beer and passionate fans. So congratulations on a good run, and condolences to all who are affected by this closure.