Breweries Opening/Closing in Minnesota 2018

I imagine the reason Bloomington does not have a brewery is because the city does not want one.

 

Wait they have a Total Wine Thou?

 

Local and state-wide legal restrictions continue to limit the development of new breweries, even if much less so than before the Surly Bill passed. That's a supply-side problem. I believe there remains plenty of demand to support far more breweries than the Twin Cities area currently offers, as long as owners locate them strategically (which, in 2018, probably largely means "outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul") and have realistically modest ambitions for their quantity of output. The citizens of Bloomington would gleefully guzzle up the beer of any halfway-decent brewery that the government officials of Bloomington, in their infallible wisdom, might so generously allow them.

Below are some large Twin Cities suburbs with zero breweries as of this writing. I believe any of these communities could successfully support at least one small brewery or brewpub, almost regardless of the quality of the beer served. Note that Minneapolis proper has about 1 brewery/brewpub per 13,000 people.

• Bloomington (86k population)
• Plymouth (78k)
• Eden Prairie (64k)
• Apple Valley (52k)
• Maplewood (41k)
• Cottage Grove (37k)
• Richfield (36k)
• Inver Grove Heights (35k)
• Andover (32k)
• Savage (31k)
• Brooklyn Center (31k): Famously hosts the still operating original Surly brewery, but it no longer has an official taproom
• Oakdale (28k)
• Fridley (28k)
• Shoreview (27k)
• Ramsey (27k)
• Chaska (27k)
• Owatonna (26k)
• Chanhassen (26k)
• Champlin (25k)

 

Well, I tried real hard to open Dave's BrewFarm as a brewpub in Plymouth from 1996-1999...

 

Pantown in St. Cloud should be opening up in the next couple of weeks. They plan on having 4 beers on tap to start, and have been brewing for a week now.

http://wjon.com/the-wait-is-almost-...o0hcQ5ghruyM07IFv2_JgDP8xwO4Kamkngw02Kf0zYO2g

 

The owners of Gull Dam are retiring and December 31st will be the taproom’s last day.

 

My first thought is: Maybe another outfit will re-start it under a new name? I’ve passed by a couple of times, and it seems perfectly situated.

My second thought: Not every small town in flyoverland can support a taproom or brewery. Feel free to apply this to the heavily researched metrics provided by @islay.

 

I’d have sworn they had a soft opening by now?

 

Go big or go home, right?

You were WAY ahead of the curve, Dave!

 

Great location.
Worst beer I've ever had. (miles behind Jack Pine, Roundhouse, and Big Axe in the area)

 

I like how the whole press release tells of the "world class beer" and retirement of the owners while the main point I got out of the press release is "the plan is to sell the business".

I may be completely wrong but I'm guessing the brewery wasn't doing well financially and the owners are cutting their losses while they can still retire. I wonder if their building is owned or leased. It is a great location that I drove past many times due to the poor reputation of their beer. Put a good brewery there and I'll be happy to stop for some crowlers on the way up north.

 

More on Gull Dam...
https://growlermag.com/gull-dam-brewing-closing-at-end-of-2018-retiring-owners-to-sell-the-business/

 

"Retiring" is a nice way to put it. Tried that brewery several times while up there mountain biking and they never got better. Just terrible IMHO.

 

14 Lakes might be a peg behind these guys.

 

Haven't been there. Are you saying 14 lakes is behind Gull Dam... or behind the others I named?

 

Yes. I was there in January. Not good at all. It's been awhile, maybe things have improved.....?

 

I got a hearty chuckle out of both the “world class beer” and “#2 thing to do in Nisswa.” comments. It’s almost like it was written for The Onion.

 

Personally I thought 14 Lakes was definitely better than Gull dam and was decent enough when I stopped last summer. I had heard bad things too but it wasn't that bad. Not saying it compares to Jackpine, Portage or Bemidji in northern MN but it was in the neighborhood of a few others. Better than Gull Dam.

 

Right on. Great facility but totally clueless owners. The very first brewer they had when they opened knew what he was doing and did some good beers. But they split up over a difference of opinion on the direction of the brewery and since then they've basically hired anyone who knows how to pour grain and hops into water.

This is actually great news if they can find a good owner who really wants to put out quality beer. Like I said it's a great facility.

 

With a large, "soulless and utilitarian" taproom, 20-barrel brewhouse, and reliance on seasonal, out-of-town visitors, Gull Dam isn't exactly the modern bakery-model brewery that I think is sustainable in large numbers. It's closer to the speculative, heavily leveraged,* distribution-oriented approach that all too often stems from unrealistic industry-wide sales growth expectations, failure adequately to account for increased competition, and foolhardy conviction in the company's product or the owner's business acumen. The struggles of many breweries with that basic strategy, in the present and, I expect, even much more so in the future, are part of what is enabling their numerous, nimble, pint-sized competitors to flourish. Go small or go home.

* I don't know how much debt Gull Dam took on, but many craft breweries of its size and larger take on quite a bit.

That said, for all I know, the retirement story may be legitimate and unprompted by business challenges, although I'm skeptical for various though conjecture-based reasons.