USA, CA: Twisted Manzanita Ales & Spirits no longer making beer

A Santee brewery — known in its six-year history as Manzanita Brewing, Twisted Manzanita Brewing, Twisted Manzanita Ales and Twisted Manzanita Ales & Spirits — is no longer making beer, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on March 3.

While the company’s distillery remains in business, the brewery stopped making beer this week, days after its Pacific Beach tasting room closed. The owner, Jeff Trevaskis, informed his staff of the news and their impending layoffs in an email on March 2.

“There were a lot of good people that worked there,” said John Olsen, the brewery’s vice president of business development. “They were passionate about the craft world. It’s sad to see that they are going to have to move on.”

Olsen estimated that the brewery had fewer than 15 full-time employment positions.

The closure took many of Twisted Manzanita’s fans by surprise. The company’s website makes no reference to any changes, and is still accepting reservations for $25 brewery tours into August.

On Facebook, Twisted Manzanita advertised beer sales and encouraged people to drop in for “one of our last Thirsty Thursdays!”

Typical reader reaction: “??”

“Come celebrate the memories,” the company responded. “Under new ownership.”

In recent weeks, it seemed that the company had decided to emphasize its distillery — which still operates, producing rye whiskey, vodka and liqueurs made with lemons, limes, grapefruit and apples — over its brewery.

Last week, while the beer tasting rooms were winding down, Twisted Manzanita opened a “speakeasy” to sell cocktails and bottles of spirits.

In February, when head brewer Daniel Cady left to join the new Mikkeller Brewing San Diego, he was not replaced.

Still, this was a sudden and unheralded end for Santee’s oldest brewery. Opening in 2010, Manzanita was eventually distributed in nine states and 10 foreign countries. It was followed to this East County city by Butcher’s Brewing, Pacific Islander and the brewery-distillery BNS. Karl Strauss intends to relocate here, too, having acquired a 10-acre site to build its main production facility.

While craft beer remains a booming industry in San Diego County — on March 1, the doors opened on the area’s 120th brewery, Burning Beard in El Cajon — there are signs the market is tightening.

Twisted Manzanita is the second local brewery to close in little more than a month. El Cajon’s URBN St. brewpub stopped making its own beer in late January — a blow to Twisted Manzanita, which contracted to make some of URBN St.’s “house” beers.

There’s also increased pressure from corporate players buying local breweries (Saint Archer by MillerCoors, Ballast Point by Constellation) and planning an East Village brewpub (Anheuser-Busch’s 10 Barrel).

04 March, 2016