USA, WI: MobCraft Beer being sold, to close Milwaukee taproom by the end of November

MobCraft Beer, which began its innovative crowdsourced brewery model in 2013, is being sold to an (as of yet) undisclosed buyer and will close its Milwaukee taproom at the end of November. The brewery announced the move on October 30 in a post on its website.

“We’ve poured our heart and souls into the brewery and our community but reached a point where we could no longer operate as a stand-alone organization,” the statement says. “When the opportunity came up to sell the brewery, we decided to consider it to keep our brand around at wholesale, and keep as many of our staff members as possible employed in our taprooms. We’re in the midst of working on the deal now, and there will be changes but they are not fully known yet. The MobCraft you know and love today won’t exist in its entirety after this process, but some aspects will.”

Co-founder Henry Schwartz told Milwaukee Magazine: “We had a financial runway and just got to the end of it. Our production floor was nowhere near capacity and we need a larger entity to help support operations with increased facility output. Since our expansion plans started, we needed increased revenue for the whole company to be successful. Having to close one taproom and lose money on another not coming to fruition left us teetering on break-even, where our state of Wisconsin distribution footprint and taproom sales alone couldn’t quite support it all without additional output.”

MobCraft opened a location in the large but competitive craft beer market of Denver in late 2022, but it closed just eight months later. Plans to add a taproom closer to home in Waterford fell through in early 2024. A location in Woodstock, Illinois, celebrated its grand opening in February 2024.

Schwartz, head brewer Andrew Gierczak and former partner Giotto Troia launched the brewery in Madison (with most of the brewing done at Madison’s now defunct House of Brews) under an unusual crowdsourcing model. Fans and homebrewers submitted ideas for beers or recipes online, and those ideas were put to a vote, and the most popular idea was brewed – with votes doubling as orders for the beer. Schwartz appeared on “Shark Tank” in 2016 (ultimately earning no investors), a few months before opening a brewery and taproom in Walker’s Point (505 S. Fifth St.) that fall.

The crowdsourcing model – and the off-the-wall beers that emerged from it – generated a lot of buzz early in MobCraft’s run. Its reputation was fun but irreverent, making chocolate banana stout, a pilsner using cashews and the pungent durian fruit, a carrot cake ale. Many of MobCraft’s beers were so weird that it named its unusually straightforward kölsch Oddball. Its annual Weird Fest Block Party included drastically experimental beer recipes, Mondo Lucha wrestling and a live mermaid. And one of the events at this year’s Mobtoberfest was a sausage sculpting contest.

But MobCraft was no slouch in the brewing department, especially when it came to sours. Its Low pHunk Sour Ale won gold at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival and bronze at GABF in 2022. Its flagship Bat$hit Crazy English Brown Ale claimed a silver at GABF in 2014. The brewery also had occasional beer quality problems that Schwartz has admitted were tough to shake, and was no stranger to controversy, some of which emanated from the crowdsourced model.

True to form, MobCraft isn’t going away quietly. It has a number of events still scheduled, including Stout Fest on Nov. 23 and a big closing party on Nov. 30. Plans for the future of the taproom are still in flux.

“The taproom will most likely be something new, but we’re still working through those details,” added Schwartz. “Things aren’t all 100%.”

31 October, 2024