A few weeks ago, I travelled to Maryland. The reason for my trip was to attend a memorial service for my step-Father-in-Law, who had passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. My wife and drove to Maryland on a Thursday. As we were picking up my oldest daughter, who was flying in from Cincnnati, OH the next morning, we stayed at a hotel right next to BWI Airport.
In preparation for the trip, I googled breweries near to where we would be staying. I was pleased to discover that Thursday night’s hotel was only a couple of miles from the recently opened Guinness Brewery. Opened in 2018, it was the first Guinness brewery to operate in the United States since the last one closed in 1954. That brewery was near New York City and had been opened primarily to quench the thirst of soldiers returning from World War II. Guinness had figured American soldiers who had served in Europe would have a craving for the stout they’d tasted overseas. It appears that Guinness had overestimated consumer interest in their product and the brewery closed in 1954 due to lack of demand.
I had visited the Guinness Storehouse (immersive experience) in Dublin, Ireland in 2015, so I was keen to visit the Baltimore brewery. The brewery is not actually located in the city of Baltimore, but rather in nearby Halethorpe, about 10 miles southwest of downtown Baltimore.
Before visiting the brewery, I had dinner at a well-known chain restaurant next to our hotel. As it was the evening before St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to have a Guinness Stout. When my bottle of Guinness arrived, I noticed that it was brewed in Dublin. I had hoped that it would have been brewed at the nearby brewery, but as I was to later discover later the iconic brew is not produced at the Baltimore facility.
In an interview with NPR, Peter Simson (head brewer at Guinness’s Dublin brewery) stated “I think Guinness stout is such an iconic stout, it has such strong links back to Dublin and back to Ireland, that it would feel wrong to take it away from Ireland and to brew it over here”.
While not brewing Guinness Stout, the Baltimore brewery does brew an impressive range of other beers. These included a Blonde Ale, a Honey Ale, and several IPAs and Stouts. On my visit I opted for their Galaxy IPA (brewed with Australian Galaxy hops) and a brew from their Hop Exploration Series, a French IPA (brewed with French malt and hops).
Exploration and discovery are very much part of the brewery’s modus operandi. The brewery has a 10-barrel pilot system, which is used for smaller experimental batches. As noted on the brewery’s website, “We focus our attention on putting our spin on classic styles, introducing new ones, and utilizing both historic and new age ingredients and processes to create an exciting, ever-changing beer program”. A 100-hectoliter brewing system allows the brewery to produce larger batches of selected beers for off-site distribution. This is the second pilot initiative started by Guinness. In 2015, they opened the Guiness Open Gate Brewery, in close proximity to their main brewery in Dublin, where you can sample “experimental beers you won’t find anywhere else”. In producing experimental beers that you can only taste on-site, Guinness is functioning in similar fashion to a craft brewery.
Guinness is no longer a stand-alone company. In 1997, it merged with Grand Metropolitan, a leisure, manufacturing and property conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom, to form a new company called Diageo. Diageo spent $90 million to convert the historic Calvert distillery (1933-2015) into the present-day Baltimore brewery.
As you enter the grounds of the brewery, there is a sign that says “Welcome to the only Guinness brewery in the USA”. While true, that sign will soon need to be removed. In the summer of this year, Gunness will open its second brewery, which will be housed in a former Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal building in Chicago, Il. From available media reports, it appears that the Chicago facility will not be as large as that in Baltimore. It will have a small pilot brewery, which will produce small batch and experimental brews. It will also have a taproom, restaurant, and outdoor patio space.
The Baltimore brewery is a multi-level facility. From what I could tell, brewing is done on the ground level, with the taproom and gift shop on the second floor. The taproom is spacious and the staff attentive. The gift shop has all the usual items you might expect – t-shirts, ball caps, refrigerator magnets, etc. The brewery also offers a number of tours and experiences, including a barrel-aged tasting experience and a guided tour of their pilot brewery.
Just as I was about to post this blog entry, a friend texted me a link to a news story that Guinness was going to close part of its Baltimore production facility. Seventy-nine workers will be laid off. On the positive note, the taproom, restaurant, and the pilot brewery will stay open, thus retaining approximately 100 jobs. A spokesman for the company said, “After careful consideration and analysis of our supply footprint, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close our manufacturing facility” in Baltimore. Furthermore, “in order to ensure long term sustainable growth for Diageo, we are optimizing our existing operations across North America to meet evolving consumer preferences.” The two most interesting phrases from that statement are “supply footprint” and “evolving consumer preferences”. The flagship beer of the Baltimore brewery is Baltimore Blonde. Baltimore Blonde has been brewed in Baltimore since the opening of the Guinness facility. The brew has been around since 2014, however. Back then it was called Guinness Blonde and was brewed in Latrobe, PA. It may not be doing as well in the marketplace as Guinness had hoped. The owner of a Baltimore liquor store noted that Baltimore Blonde is not a top seller. On the popular beer rating site Untappd, it has a rating of 3.56, which is below 3.71, the average Untappd rating found by one study. So perhaps the brewery was not selling enough of its flagship beer to justify a dedicated brewing facility. Although Baltimore Blonde will no longer be brewing Baltimore Blonde, local economic development agents are keen to make sure that its producton remains in Baltimore. Continued production of the Lager will likely be sub-contracted to another brewery, with Baltimore’s Heavy Seas brewery being mentioned as a possibility. While the downscaling of production at Guinness’s Baltimore brewery may leave a bad taste in the mouth of local economic development officials, keeping production local might soothe some of their disappointment.