Brindle Haus reflections: The state of NYS beer and why a brewery closed
I spoke with John Boothe, the co-founder of the Spencerport brewery, to learn more about the brewery's closure and how the market has changed
With a brewery closing, I always want the chance to talk to the owner, to do a debrief, to think about what happened and what could happen in the future. The craft beer industry is in a current state of flux and uncertainty. Many folks are pretty pessimistic, but I think it’s important to approach this with a clear head and an open mind.
Though as my friend Chris O’Leary showed in a recent Brew York and Beyond newsletter, things here in New York aren’t that bad (or as bad as they are in some other places). We have 505 breweries in New York right now. That’s second in the country, but significantly behind the state of California which experienced a net loss of 41 breweries in 2024. New York, meanwhile, gained six breweries and saw a growth of 11 percent more beer by volume, according to the Colorado-based Brewers Association. (More on those numbers below, including a helpful visual and a link to check out how other states fared.)
I was particularly struck by Chris’s observation about the health of our overall beer scene. He shared:
What’s notable is that the slowing in growth among the states with the ten most breweries seems to be concentrated in the West. New York joined Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in net-gaining breweries year over year. It’s a sign that the Northeast and Midwest might have less-mature beer scenes that haven’t experienced the oversaturation that the American West has.
Chris also observes how even with NY having four of the ten largest craft brewers in the country really driving up total volume produced, most breweries are making under 3,000 barrels per year. That’s certainly where we see breweries in and around Rochester sitting. Most breweries here are much smaller, while only a few exceed that threshold (Three Heads, Rohrbach, and Other Half being some of the bigger brands). “It’s not a guarantee, but making good beer, creating a great environment for drinking beer, and staying small can still be a model for success in beer,” Chris writes. (And I can’t stress this enough, if you haven’t yet subscribed to Brew York, remedy that ASAP.)
This is all really a roundabout way to talk about the current state of the industry. And then we can segue into how it plays out at the local level, where we’ve seen more closures than openings in the last two years. (Though some of the places that closed have quickly reopened under new ownership or with new identities.) Taking it a step further, I was thankful to chat with Brindle Haus co-founder/co-owner John Boothe for a few minutes recently. Brindle Haus fit perfectly into that small, taproom-driven model where many breweries are finding success. And it was successful, it was just time for the owners to move on. Because we rarely ever get a chance to hear from someone who has devoted a significant amount of time, energy, and money to making beer professionally, I thought this conversation could be enlightening.
Boothe was very candid about the state of the industry and why the time was right to shutter Brindle Haus, at least for now. Here’s a Q&A from our recent chat, edited slightly for clarity and length. Thanks again to John for chatting with me. I’ll have more on the forthcoming Bones and Barley Brewing Co. as we inch closer to its opening.
Cleveland Prost: You’ve been running this brewery remotely for a number of years now. When did you move down to North Carolina and why did you choose to move down there?
John Boothe: We moved down here in 2019, right before the start of corona. Our house in Spencerport, we own 25 acres out there, it was re-assessed and the appraisal shot up and our taxes almost doubled. We said, ‘We can’t live in New York anymore because of the taxes.’ Our taxes went up $7,000 in one year. And I couldn't justify that. I was done.
CP: What were some of the challenges of running a brewery remotely over the last few years?
JB: Mainly just people-related and making sure you have the right people in place. We were lucky enough to have the same core of seven employees for the entire time we’ve owned the brewery. We hired our brewer in 2018. (Head brewer) Mark (Burch) has been there for six years, going on seven now. We hired him early. So the core group of people has been there. We had many of the same bartenders up front, one of which kinda ran our day-to-day, managerial operations. Having people like that around helped us. But that’s also the biggest risk, right? You leave something you have all this money invested in to other people to manage. It’s hard. And if something ever goes wrong, you’re not there. I’m 10 hours away. Thinks have gone wrong and I’ve had to hop into a car and drive 10 hours to deal with it.
CP: Did you ever have to do that at any point?
JB: Yeah, I did a couple of times. And even though we’re so close to closing and selling the place, I still have to deal with it, because we’re still technically own the place. But there is a major roof leak apparently now. (Note: We talked the Friday before the brewery’s final three days of operation.) All of the wonderful rain you guys are getting up there, it’s just giving us one last kick in the butt on the way out.
CP: At what point did you decide it was the right time and you needed to close or sell?
JB: We have three kids, 6, 8, and 10, and they’re all into sports. We’re gone four or five nights a week, plus a day on the weekends for games. It’s just unattainable. Your kids only grow up once and you don’t want to miss that. I didn’t want to miss any of my kids’ lives.
CP: The brewery was for sale for quite a while, right?
JB: Two years. We had a couple of prospective buyers. But with the industry downturn, folks who didn't have cash couldn’t afford to pay for it. They had to get backing from the bank. Banks, at this point in time, are not too interested in lending money to breweries, because they’re going bankrupt left and right, as you're aware.
CP: The last time we talked (late last year), you told me that you weren't looking to sell the brewery because it wasn't doing well. You were looking to sell because it wasn’t the right thing for your family.
JB: That’s exactly it. So the people who are buying it, they could afford to pay for it themselves. Again, the business has been doing relatively well. From a distribution perspective, we’ve selectively pulled back. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Pete Waughtel, our sales guy, he wanted to retire. So we let him go. And then we started using Rob (Richenberg from BrewBuddies) for existing accounts. Outside of distribution, our sales have been really consistent throughout the last few years. In distribution sales, we pulled back a little. We pulled out of the Buffalo market entirely. We used to do $50,000 a year in sales in the Buffalo market. We pulled out of that market altogether. We’ve adjusted. Because those expenses are flexible expenses, so if you don't pursue those markets, you don’t have those expenses to take on.
CP: Outside of the distance, what are some of the other challenges you faced?
JB: We have been fairly insulated from a lot of what the rest of the industry is going through. We didn’t have a lot of local competition. We didn’t have three or four breweries down the street that we were constantly competing against. Whether it’s price, product, whatever the equation was, we always had that local support. That's always been a piece of our puzzle. The only piece of our puzzle that we struggled with, and this has nothing to do with being away from the business, is inflation, increasing prices. Our cost to can has almost doubled in the last three years. Anything to do with producing beer has increased exponentially. So when you used to have margins of 60 percent on your product, now you’re dealing with margins of 30 or 40 percent on your products. Again, we’ve been insulated because of the way we run our business, but a lot of places haven’t been due to the reality of how craft beer sales channels work.
CP: Everyone who talks about Brindle Haus talks about the community it has become. The new owners were talking about that as one of the major reasons why they wanted to buy the brewery, why they wanted to step in. How proud are you of what you guys built?
JB: We’re extremely proud of what we built. The community, the friends we’ve made, that was really our family. That was a tough situation to leave because of all the friends we made. And it goes back to the employees we have. They’re all family and we treat them like family. We’ve never treated them like just employees. All of the Pack (mug club) members, they’ve become family and have always supported this place. One of our Pack members, Larry, he volunteers and comes in every canning day to can. Again, he doesn’t have to. He just loves being there. That’s a forever relationship.
We’re super proud people put this trust into us and appreciated what we’ve built. That’s just one of multiple people that have seen this place as their second home. And that’s what we’re most proud of. It’s not winning beer awards and stuff like that. We’ve won a bunch of beer awards. We’re proud of that. You make craft beer, you want it to be good. But it’s all about the community, the people, we’re proud of that. We used to come in and we hadn't been in in three or four months and we’d sit on the back corner bench and we’d see 40 or 50 people having a great time. Everybody knew each other. That’s what we were proud of. I like to think we brought a community together.
CP: That’s what we always appreciated about the brewery. And we’re sorry to see it end, but we’re happy it’s going to continue in a new format with a different identity.
JB: It’s going to be good. We’re planning to come back in a few months and visit. You always say to give a place a couple of months before you judge it. So we’re excited to come back in a few months and see what they’ve done with it.
CP: You previously talked about how you didn’t wanna sell the brand, the intellectual property, and the business itself. You were looking to sell the location and the equipment. Why was it so important for you to hang onto that Brindle Haus identity?
JB: It’s our family story. And that’s our dog Mia on the logo. You say there’s not a price on everything, but that price was exponentially higher, because it’s our dog and she means more to us than anyone else who might be buying it. We were not comfortable with letting that go.
CP: Holding onto the brand, do you think you could pursue it again in the future?
JB: Potentially in retirement. It’s always a thought. It’s something I’ve loved my whole life. I’ve always loved brewing beer. And maybe when the kids are no longer in the picture, that might be what I fall back to. The original plan was to do it in retirement, but it didn’t quite happen that way. (Note: In my 2017 opening story, John talked about this and said they just decided to open a brewery when they saw the market factors were amenable to jumping in.) We wanted to seize the opportunity at the time and we did. Ten years down the road, maybe. But right now, there are no plans to reopen. I’m gonna watch my kids grow up and not the distractions from that.
CP: Anything else, John? Any parting thoughts?
JB: I hope the Rochester beer scene stabilizes. If people don't support their local craft breweries, even if there are four or five places locally, like in the city centers, they could lose them. I know some folks are struggling right now. You don't know what you’re missing until it’s gone. They will be gone unless they get some support, sooner than later.
Note: Here’s the visual basis for some of the claims/analysis above. I stole this from Emily Forrester’s Instagram story. Emily is the eternally lovely and always excellent events and membership manager for the New York State Brewers Association. Thanks, Emily!
You can also interact with the state-level stats through the Brewers Association website here.
For more on Brindle Haus’s closure and its new life, check out the two stories I wrote last month:
A final note: The Cleveland Prost remains the preeminent source for regional beer news. If you own a brewery, bar, or beer-adjacent business, this is the best place to reach the nerds you wanna be in front of. So I remain open to sponsorships, advertisements, and sponsored content. Feel free to reach out to me at clevelandprost@gmail.com for more. And more than anything, thanks for all the support. None of this would be possible without the devoted (and thirsty) audience.
>“It’s not a guarantee, but making good beer, creating a great environment for drinking beer, and staying small can still be a model for success in beer,” Chris writes.
I've been preaching this for years, the staying small part in particular. The best model for craft breweries is the taproom driven one. Most breweries are just local watering holes, and ones that potentially have a higher profit margin from making their own product - or at least making the main draw. Some distribution is always great too, of course, but if you start out looking to be the next Stone, Southern Tier, Founders or whatever massive regional brewery you aren't likely to make it. Not many of those left that are still independently owned anyways, and for good reason. The top dogs today are embracing expansion through taprooms, whether it's scaling up at home like Fidens (so far) or branching out to new cities and states like Other Half and Tree House. But again, most places are and should just be content to be a local watering hole, you need to be really exceptional to expand to the level those guys have and even if you are it's going to take time to get there.
Outside all of the usual not beer specific sound business planning, financials, and work ethic you need two things to have a successful brewery from what I've seen. A good product and a good location. Sometimes all you need is one of those two, but that's much less a guarantee. Copper Leaf comes to mind as a place that had, IMO, a really great product but failed because of their location (no street visibility, limited space, presumably very high property costs being in Pittsford, and most people coming to that area for a drink want to sit out by the canal in nicer weather and will end up a stones throw away at Lock 32 for exactly that reason). And I won't name names, but some of the recent closures were places I wouldn't have recommended for the beer alone, when I went back to them it was because the location was convenient. Obviously, taste is entirely subjective and I'm sure some loved the beer at those places, but clearly not enough to keep them going.
It's also going to be an uphill battle if you don't brew the popular styles well, particularly IPAs, even if you do excel at more niche things like a good ESB, red ale, dunkel, etc. Just the nature of business, not unique to beer. Gotta sell what people want, or at least have it available to bring them in and discover the rest of your offerings.
Couldn’t agree more on the community aspect. Always felt like family. Loved the vibe at Brindle, the staff and of course the beer! Loved bringing our dogs there! Wishing Barley and Bones the best of luck and we’ll certainly be there for your opening!