It appears there might be some smoke and mirrors involved in the news Elysian Brewing is shutting down its Georgetown facility and taproom to focus on its original Capitol Hill location.
Multiple outlets including the Washington Beer Blog have reported on beer giant Anheuser-Busch’s to shutter the Georgetown facility and cut up to 90 jobs as 2024 draws to an end. Reportedly, AB InBev is spinning the shutdown as a renewal of investment in its original E Pike brewery.
“We opened the doors of our Capitol Hill Brewery & Pub in 1996, and since then, it’s been the heart and soul of Elysian,” an Elysian spokesperson is reportedly telling media. “This $1.7 million investment — the largest we’ve ever made in our flagship location — will ensure that our Capitol Hill Brewery & Pub continues to be a gathering place for beer lovers into the future and we’re proud to continue brewing locally and serving our beloved Capitol Hill community.”
It appears that Elysian’s $1.7 million has already been spent. UPDATE: An Anheuser-Busch spokesperson assures CHS that its investment will be a additional spend beyond the overhaul of the Capitol Hill facility.
CHS reported here in 2019 as the company reopened the E Pike venue after a massive overhaul with new brew tanks, vintage design elements and bleacher stadium seats, mid-century lamps from the Czech Republic, plus doors and large beams from the former brew space in a redesign that also removed walls separating the brewery area from the rest of the pub to better show off the brewing process.
The budget on the long-delayed project reported by CHS in 2018? $1.5 million.
We’ve asked Anheuser-Busch for more specifics about their plans on Capitol Hill. The Washington Beer Blog reports some of the Georgetown brewery crew will be shifted to E Pike where Elysian was born nearly 30 years ago before being acquired by the beer giant in 2015.
UPDATE: The company says it plans to spend an additional $1.7 million to increase the Capitol Hill facility’s capabilities and improve the customer experience. Anheuser-Busch did not provide details if the spending will include capital and employee investments.
There are also larger questions being asked about the Georgetown shutdown. Teamsters Local Union 117 says the shutdown is “retaliatory” and will come after “workers had invested more than a year negotiating with Elysian’s corporate owner” over unionization and an improved contract.
Recent years have brought significant changes to Capitol Hill’s beer breweries. 2023 brought both the acquisition of Broadway-born craft brewery Optimism by Stoup Brewing and the spinoff of the Anheuser-Busch-owned Redhook beer brand to “global cannabis-lifestyle” company Tilray in an $85 million deal. The tiny and compact E Pike Redhook Brewlab is the last brewery and pub remaining open in the Redhook line. The company produces many of its small batch and experimental creations on E Pike but turns to larger facilities in Oregon for the bulk of its bottled and canned products.
Tinier Outer Planet qualifies for “nano-brewery” status with its microbrewery and pub making beer on the ground floor of a microhousing development. It remains fully independent.
Elysian has been brewing beer on Capitol Hill for nearly 30 years and in Georgetown for the past 13 years. When the E Pike facility was overhauled five years ago, its 20-barrel setup which had been there since 1996 was sold off to Urban Family Brewing Co. in Magnolia and replaced by a new 15-barrel installation. The new system was designed for smaller batches, more styles, and allows brewers more options to experiment, the company said at the time. Bottling and canning at large scale will require outsourcing Elysian brewing to other facilities controlled by the global beer giant.
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Spending money for goods and services not owned truly locally is simply wrong.
Yeah it’s Anheuser Busch Budweiser now. But how much of what we spend is local? Not much.
Have fun not buying much… oh wait, Amazon is ‘local’, buy whatever you like..
Totally agree…imagine how much more “right” we would be if Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Costco, and Nordstrom only sold to us locally and didn’t bother with the rest of the world.
An interesting sentiment, but completely impractical and potentially detrimental to local suppliers, employees, and others who likely provide many of the food ingredients and other food service items which make Elysian go. Blanket statements rarely have much value, I’m afraid.
Hopefully this gives an opportunity for one of the successful local breweries to move into the old Elysian space and grow locally!
The Elysian venue which closed was not the Capitol Hill brewpub, but the “taproom” they operated in a corner of their Georgetown warehouse. It’s difficult to imagine how it could be rented out for any other purpose – there’s not even any wall separating the taproom from the warehouse, just a railing.
They are shuttering both the production facility and the taproom in Georgetown, I’m hoping someone from the area can make the leap and make that their space.
I am glad they have, apparently, committed to spending the money on the Cap Hill location but I cannot imagine how any remodeling, additions, or improvements will replace the sheer magnitude of the Gtown facility — it is a very large production facility. Cap Hill is a brewpub. I’m not sure how, given the footprint of the space and the size of the brew system, AB thinks they’ll create many production jobs at Cap Hill. Regardless of what they say.