USA, SC: Conquest Brewing Company announces decision to close down

Conquest Brewing Company, Columbia’s first craft brewery, is closing, The State reported on July 26.

The company, located in a nondescript warehouse near Williams-Brice Stadium, has announced on its Facebook page that it “will soon wind down operations.”

“It’s time to hang up our swords and mash paddles,” the post said. “We do not have a closing date to share right now, but we have beer on hand and new ones in tanks and we’d like to sell it and be wrapped up sometime around the beginning of fall.”

The post said that there was no one reason for shuttering the business, which has been in operation since 2012.

“A combination of internal and external factors and odds and ends we won’t bore you with have us sitting where we do now,” is said. “The decision to sunset this brewery at this time was not an easy one, but it is the one we have chosen to make.”

Since Conquest opened, nearly a dozen breweries and distilleries have opened in the Midlands.

Some, like River Rat on Shop Road in Columbia and Steel Hands in Cayce, offer wide lawns and beer gardens and feature entertainment from concerts to trivia contests. Hunter-Gatherer even expanded into the historic Curtiss-Wright Hanger at Jim Hamilton–L.B. Owens Airport.

Conquest chose not to expand out of its small tasting room in its original warehouse at 947 S. Stadium Road.

“Some really great developments were hard for us to capitalize on, given where we were in time and place,” the post said. “Others we jumped all over. In other cases, we could have done better.”

Brook Bristow, of Bristow Beverage Law in Charleston, called Conquest “a pioneer.” But he added that small breweries have to evolve to keep up with the competition.

“South Carolina is to the point where in the last five years we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of percentages of growth in craft breweries,” he said. “These days, if you are a small brewery, then you have to focus on the tap room to get your product out.”

28 July, 2019