Brewery Updates in Minnesota (2019)

Despite its craziness, Beer People is often on top of things.

Shame to hear, as they were super nice guys and it was a great little space.

 

Sadly, right after you left I heard this rumor from a great source about this closing. They were good people.

 

Darned rumor mill! I heard it from a different source, but have been too busy to confirm it.

 

Welfare check on @islay?

 

over/under 500 characters?

 

That's too damn bad. I've only been there twice - being in out state, MN - , but was very happy with their beers. My guess is the location was a part of the issue. I knew where it was, but still had a tough time finding it.

Best wishes for the crew there

 

I'm crushed I missed the scoop.

I was a big fan of the initial incarnation of the brewery, with its wide variety of styles and emphasis on dry, lower-ABV beers. I was less impressed (though still overall a fan) after it, like many other breweries, shifted focus to match the market's demand for sweeter and trendier fare, and the frequency of my visits had dropped accordingly.

I don't know what drove the closure. Last I heard a few weeks ago, it was investing in a crowler canning line because its liquor store distribution was picking up, and it was bringing in a new brewer. Those aren't actions I would expect from a brewery on the verge of closing.

I will say that downtown/Lowertown St. Paul is a tough location with a bad combination of high rents, typical St. Paul red tape, lack of free street parking (which does matter), inconvenience to the majority of west-metro-based Twin Cities area residents, and low after-work weekday traffic from which all of the breweries in that area, including the bigger names, suffer. 12welve Eyes probably had the worst location of the lot in terms of foot traffic even though the venue itself was pleasant. Developing an early reputation for being off-trend surely didn't help. Anyway, good brewery, gone too soon.

 

Opened up with 4 beers on tap.

Blonde ale
Brown ale
American wheat
IPA

 

If you bet the over you won. Just in the last paragraph alone. Hold your tickets until official announcement. Thanks for playing.

 

Low blow @JakeJohnson!

Are you officially on the payroll now?

(Asking for a friend.)

 

If all goes well, and things work out, I'll be stopping there on the way to the Angle in a few weeks.

 

Awesome! I hope you do! May have another beer on tap by then too

 

Exactly. Especially to the new Head Brewer they hired about two months ago!!!

 

Sorry to see any brewery go under but with associated costs of running a brewery & the sheer amount of places and choices the consumer has today this has to become more & more common.

I think location is absolutely vital to survival.

 

I bet the per square footage was between $21 and $25. That's hard to sustain in the early years of a brand new brewery.

 

First Great Waters Brewing in November, now 12welveyes 6 months later....

 

They posted on their Facebook page that they closed yesterday.

 

I thought the 12welveyes location was downright bad. No idea if that factored into the closing but I just can’t imagine they had much foot traffic, and parking in that specific area was tough. I make the trek to St. Paul 5-6 times a year and I never even considered a stop there after my initial visit. It was just easier to go to Bad Weather, Waldmann, BT, Birches, etc. Wish the crew well in whatever they choose to do next. I think we will start to see more closings in the next 12-18 months.