This was a weird one. Their beers were good and rather unique, but it always felt like their business decisions were always made with the absolute best possible scenario in mind. Every move they made baffled a little, but I did hit up JM regularly. Their Sichuan stout was probably the single best beer I had during the COVID era. The rebrand and 2nd location were definitely head scratchers. I'm not sure things would have worked out any better in 2013-2017, but they didn't get any help from the state of the world in 2020. Oh well. Hopefully he can channel some of that energy elsewhere. We've seen plenty of brewers (even owners) pop up in other breweries and rekindle some of their magic.
The whole concept was odd after they kept the Japanese tea house beers but tried to emulate TRVE. I hadn't heard of them before the name change, but it was a bit too on the nose when they changed to a TRVE look alike. In true () gatekeeper fashion i refused to go based on obvious coat tail riding.
It's looking like Dewey could be the next domino to fall. They killed off all their social media pages and people on FB are saying they're closed. Someone also posted that the place will rebrand as a bar/restaurant sans the Dewey name, though. They're one of the few places with beers that I straight up disliked, so I'm all for people keeping their jobs and Dewey to stop taking up space on our shelves.
Out of curiosity, was it their fruit beers that you disliked? Also, was that location not great? I’m surprised they didn’t make it, they do really well here where I live.
Never actually tried any fruit beers. It's actually the stouts. I bought a 6-pack of their normal 'ol stout, Sunset Eclipse, and it tasted buttery. I can count the number of stouts I've gotten diacetyl (or some extremely similar compound) from, and Dewey's stout was one of them. I handed it off to my wife to make sure it wasn't me, and she got the same thing. I cracked the other cans to make sure, and yup, they're all like that. The whole bunch of 'em got tossed, and they were fresh, too. I tried a draft pour of Mocha Cakes and it tasted like a mix of stale coffee and those Torani flavored syrups with the pumps. I'm totally cool with "dumb but fun" beers you'd get from WW, Wiley, and such but after getting butter in a normal stout and stale/artificial flavors from a pastry I'm moving on with Dewey being 0 for 2.
