Location, location, location

As others have said, it's mostly due to cost and access to utilities.
Breweries typically will need large spaces at fairly low cost, which usually means industrial areas. This also means that most of them will have rail access due to other factors, most of the time these days they do not specifically look for rail access. IN some cases a new brewery will open in a historic brewery, partially for the history, but also ease of building out.
Breweries need a lot of water, which means existing incoming water and outgoing sewer lines - those are expensive to put in to a site that doesn't aready have them. They need power - also not cheap. There are obviously other factors there too, but it all adds up to industrial sites. If the local rules allow for brewpubs as well, there are zoning rules for that - not near schools and so forth.

 

Ever been to Stone? The World Bistro and the Liberty Station locations are certainly not nondescript industrial affairs.

Of course, you can generalize and say that a brewpub will always be more appealing than a brewery. Breweries are factories while brewpubs are restaurants.

 

Most breweries have tasting rooms in MI. The exceptions are the larger production breweries that desire to concentrate on making beer, and those usually have a brewpub for their outlet.

 

Heavy Seas is located in a warehouse in industrial, unfashionable Halethorpe, Md, but they own pubs in Fells Point and in Rosslyn, Va

 

As recently as October, before the new brewery opened, it was uncomplicated to walk into the Surly taproom and enjoy a beer. There isn't a time of day or day of week when the new (and much bigger) beer hall isn't packed. I'm hesitant to credit location entirely, but it has to be a huge factor. It's especially noteworthy that the new brewery is close to several transit options, including a busway that doubles as a bicycle route.

 

It just makes more sense financially to open in suburbs/rural areas and you can keep some sanity by avoiding an overwhelming amount of red tape opening a brewery in certain cities.

The small craft brewery is not built to be financially efficient. Huge tanks need lots of room, beer sits for weeks/months/years/, multiple temp controlled environments, retail space, etc. Good luck surviving in a downtown area with that business model. No wonder why Trillium is opening a second space outside of Boston.

 

Any day now:
http://nsp.ninkasibrewing.com/

 

Both Yards and PBC are located deep in the city limits of Philly. PBC is actually in a former 19th century breweries bottle shop. Lots of cities have plenty of empty manufacturing spaces.

 

Toppling Goliath's taproom is literally in an old Pizza Hut restaurant. It's not the building, but the beer inside which makes a good taproom. Granted, a fancy or unique taproom is an added bonus, but I'm going for the beer, not the atmosphere.

 

Yeah breweries with mass appeal can do well and get significant investors to help open them. And many cities are different. It's going to be a lot harder for the guy who wants to open a 5-10bbl brewery that produces sour beers and other weird stuff downtown in a major city. Which seems to be more in line with the OP's question about why these esoteric breweries end up in remote locations.

Sure some people fall in love with rural areas and stuff so that could be their reasoning. But I'm sure they love the benefit of not having to need way more money and getting stuck in a ton of red tape.

 

Not The Mothership that's located by The U, Surly's original location was ..... interesting. I loved it.



But The Mothership is pretty spectacular.

 

Even the big boys go outside town. Here is a link my daughter sent me, don't have to love the beer to appreciate the system http://www.cbrands.com/news-media/b...look-our-nava-brewery-and-our-plans-expansion

 

Of the small to large breweries that I have visited, the new Sierra Nevada Mills River facility is so totally on the other end of this spectrum it is ridiculous.. Massive groomed Park like grounds, beautiful architecture and the inside is like Disney perfect even in the production areas.. They hide the huge manufacturing aspect very well.

 

Most of the main points I wanted to mention have been touched on (zoning, logistics, approach), but I've still got a couple things. The way a brewery makes the most money, is by selling the pint themselves for $5, not by selling the pint to to a bar for $1.50. To not have some sort of retail presence is just leaving money on the table. Add in merch sales, and a brewery can bring in some nice coin, without having to do a lot of distro.

A lot of our breweries are smaller (well under 6000 bbl a year), so being able to sell on site is almost mandatory for survival. So, with a smaller brewery and tap room, you don't need a huge space, and thus can fit into various nooks and crannies. One of our larger breweries, Fremont, is currently adding a production only facility a few blocks away from their current brewery/retail spot, and that will make them pretty unique around here. Even Full Sail, which is a pretty large production brewery has a restaurant on-site.

We have a brewery, Birdsview, that's set up in a couple of yurts. Foggy Noggin brews in their backyard shed, and uses their garage as their tasting room. Seattle has breweries of various sizes stuck into pretty much every neighborhood in town. I think a lot of has to do with beer culture. If there's not a deep culture in your area, it's probably harder to get the permitting to stuff a 2bbl system into a storefront in the middle of a retail district, than it is somewhere like Bend, PDX, and Seattle.

 

I believe it is a situation of lower rent, appropriate utility connections, and zoning laws that move breweries to the industrial areas over a spot next to the mall or something like that.

 

Good water and sewer hook ups mean a lot. Thick concrete floors to support those heavy fermenter's load (trench drains a bonus if possible). 440V electricity for high demand pump motors/ glycol chillers and such. Starts to look like a factory specification list after awhile.

 

I think people will go out of their way for good beer.

Location matters if they're not that good or bad. How else would Tugboat in downtown Portland still be around?

 

I don't think it has anything to do with a "black sheep"/inferior drink type thing at all. It likely has more to do with:

1.) Zoning.

2.) Breweries are big. Not only would it be expensive to get space in denser/more heavily trafficked areas, but I would imagine that it's very challenging to find the type of building that can house a brewery in such areas in the first place.

3.) Breweries don't need customers to get to their physical location in order to sell their product. It could help, but it's not essential, like with a restaurant. 99% of all the money I've ever used on beer has been spent multiple miles from the brewery that actually made it.

Agreed. While I believe location isn't a huge factor for brewers, that doesn't mean a great location can't equate to staying business. Trinity Brewhouse in Providence does not have good beer in my opinion, nor do they have good food. However, they are right next to lots of attractions in Providence and are frequently packed with people. So while a brewer may not need a great location to succeed, it can still be the thing that allows them to succeed.