Other Half Brewing to purchase Young Lion Brewing in Canandaigua

The six-year-old Canandaigua brewery at the north end of Canandaigua Lake announced it would sell its taproom and production facility to Other Half

Here’s some local beer news for you and it has some national implications and probably international interest.

Young Lion Brewing, founded in 2017 by Jennifer Newman and her partners, announced Wednesday in a press release that it will sell its brewery and taproom, located at 24 Lakeshore Dr. on the northern edge of Canandaigua Lake, to Brooklyn-based Other Half Brewing.

Newman said the sale is expected to close in January. Other Half co-founder Andrew confirmed the sale. He said he would have more details to share in the coming days. Newman added that Young Lion will remain open until at least mid-January.

It’s unclear what this means for the future of OH in Ontario County. Its East Bloomfield location is less than seven miles away (a 10-minute drive). Young Lion features a 30-barrel brewing system (and a bunch of other fancy equipment like a centrifuge and canning line), while East Bloomfield, which produces 30-barrel batches, has a 10-barrel system.

With the amount of beer Other Half now sends out in distribution, especially to a retail partner like Wegmans, acquiring a brewery with more than three times the fermentation capacity (Young Lion has multiple 90-barrel fermenters) makes a lot of sense.

It should be noted that the two breweries are not strangers to each other. In the past, OH brewers contract brewed batches of its flagship Green City IPA at Young Lion to meet demand. (That relationship ended a few years ago.) So yeah, this is a pretty big deal. As it stands right now, I have a ton of questions and I hope to be able to answer some of them soon.

Brooklyn-based Other Half Brewing closed on the former Nedloh Brewing building in July 2018 and opened a facility at 6621 Routes 5 and 20 in the town of East Bloomfield. Sitting on eight acres, it’s really the perfect place to spread out and let a rambunctious 2-year-old roam around. (Not that I know anything about that, particularly on Saturday mornings near open.) 

Sam Richardson (brewmaster), Burman (COO), and Matt Monahan (CEO) opened the original Brooklyn location in 2014. And now, nearly 10 years later, the much lauded and buzzed about brewery operates in seven different locations. It’ll soon be eight. And Young Lion will make nine.

Other Half boasts three locations in New York City, including two in Brooklyn and one at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, and three more large-scale production facilities/taprooms in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia (in the Fishtown neighborhood), and East Bloomfield, Ontario County (the original Nedloh Brewing location). (The FLX spot opened in April 2019.) OH also opened a taproom in Buffalo’s Seneca One building. (It’s in the process of adding a restaurant there.) And as reported elsewhere, there’s a forthcoming spot in Chicago.

OH has cemented its reputation and legacy through becoming the kings of collaboration and stalwarts of hazy IPAs. Not only has the brewery collaborated with craft heavyweights like Trillium, Monkish, Great Notion, Omnipollo, Bellwoods, and Cloudwater, but it has worked with a number of upstate New York breweries including Fifth Frame, Mortalis, Thin Man, Prison City, and, most famously, Genesee (through its Genesee Dream Ale).

OH was introduced to the Rochester market through two wildly successful mobile cans sales in early 2018 at the former Tap and Mallet spot on Gregory Street in Rochester’s South Wedge neighborhood.

Newman said Young Lion will maintain ownership of its brand and recipes and will investigate “creative solutions for its exciting future.” Young Lion, a woman-owned and managed brewery, opened in June 2017 as the anchor tenant of the Pinnacle North development in Canandaigua (right across the street from the lake and Kershaw Park).

Newman, an entrepreneur who has sold other businesses in the past, said it was a huge honor to find a new partner like Other Half. She said she would have more to share in the coming days. (So keep an eye on this space for more perspective on this huge announcement and the ramifications for our beer scene.)

“Taking care of our employees, that’s what is at the forefront of my mind right now,” Newman said Wednesday night. “Selling to probably the most prestigious brewery in the country is pretty cool. I am excited about that and they’re gonna add a vibrancy to Lakeshore.”

She said she hopes to see lots of familiar faces in the coming weeks inside the cozy taproom.

“I’m looking forward to celebrating the community we built and team we have and all of that,” Newman said. “I am so lucky for this experience. I am so grateful for the people and all of the community. It has been a real privilege. Please come see and have a beer with us.”

On a personal front, Newman has always been wonderful to me. She’s among the most caring and generous people I’ve ever met in the craft beer industry and has become a true friend. (She even attended our wedding in 2019.) I am sad to see this outcome for Young Lion but am wildly excited for Newman and the future of the Young Lion brand.

(And on another personal front and purely intended as a humble brag, I introduced OH to the Nedloh location after it was initially considering opening a Rochester-based branch office that would’ve been used to store cans for future mobile sales and have an auxiliary taproom. East Bloomfield was OH’s first location outside of Brooklyn.)