The Guinness Open Gate Brewery & Barrel House, located just south of Baltimore, is scheduled to open to the public on Aug. 3, 2018.
Guinness is about to crack open a new brewery — right here in the U.S.
The Dublin, Ireland-based producer of the fabled chocolate-colored dry stout will open the Guinness Open Gate Brewery & Barrel House on Aug. 3 near Baltimore, the first U.S. brewery Guinness has operated in more than 63 years.
The new brewery won’t be making Guinness’ most famous beers Guinness Draught Stout and Guinness Extra Stout. Those will continue to be imported. But the brewery in Relay, Maryland, just southwest of Baltimore, will produce Guinness Blonde American Lager, currently made at City Brewing in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Also on tap: experimental beers and barrel-aged beers.
The core of the brewery’s mission is to allow Guinness “to become a bigger part of the American craft beer industry, to have a place for innovation and creativity for Guinness in the states,” said Ryan Wagner, Guinness brand ambassador at the Maryland site.
The site is an appropriate one for barrel-aging of beers — a trend long practiced by American craft brewers — as the location originally served as the Maryland Distilling Company, a post-prohibition distiller opened in 1933, where Lord Calvert Whiskey was made.
Guinness’ parent company, global liquor giant Diageo, acquired the site in 2001 when it bought Seagram. Diageo also owns Harp beer, Johnny Walker, Tanqueray, Ketel One, Captain Morgan, Don Julio and other spirits. The company was formed in 1997 by the merger of Guinness with Grand Metropolitan, which at one time owned Burger King and Pillsbury.
Guinness, which was founded in 1759 and announced the new brewery in January 2017, brews beer in 49 countries but has not owned a brewery in the U.S. since it operated one in Long Island City, New York, from 1949-1954.
Its establishment of a U.S. beer beachhead to tap into the momentum of craft beer differs in strategy from that of mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch. Its parent company AB InBev has purchased a portfolio of craft breweries over the last seven years, including Goose Island Beer Co., which has a large consumer following for its barrel-aged Bourbon County Brand stouts.
Sales of major brand beers have been generally flat lately, but craft beer sales have continued to rise and were up about 8% in 2017. Overall, small, independent brewers accounted for about 23% of the $111 billion-plus U.S. beer market.
Guinness’ opening of a U.S. brewery is part of larger brewers’ strategies of attracting consumers with location-based destinations including taprooms, says Josh Noel, a beer writer at the Chicago Tribune and author of Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business.
Photos of the Guinness Factory near Baltimore, Md. on June 27, 2018.
“This is like what the craft beer revolution has wrought. Consumers don’t want to just drink anonymous brands pulled off the shelf anymore. They want an experience,” Noel said. “Guinness and Diageo have caught on. Guinness is obviously a hugely important brand for them in the U.S., but there can’t just be Guinness on top everywhere. There needs to be a Guinness experience.”
The brewing team at the new Guinness site is already brewing beer and has some beers aging in barrels. Popular Guinness beers — some shipped from Ireland — are already on tap at The Test Taproom, which Guinness opened in October at the Maryland brewery site.
Also on tap are experimental beers brewed on site such as a milk stout, coffee stout, cherry stout, India pale ale, rye pale ale, American wheat beer and a barrel-aged Belgian stout.
Within the brewery is a larger taproom where visitors can come try the beers and take guided or self-guided walking tours. The experimental brews that resonate best with consumers may become regional or national beers, Wagner says. “We are going to be looking for those beers that are successful within the taproom that we think have the ability to be scaled up,” he said.
The cost of the project, which includes a packaging and warehouse operation, is about $80 million. Guinness will employ 200 people at the site, which also includes a 270-seat restaurant, expected to open later in August. Also on site: a still-evolving outdoor event space.
Guinness’ brewers at the new site have admirable pedigrees: Brewmaster Peter Wiens previously helped Stone Brewing Co., establish its Richmond, Virginia brewery; Hollie Stephenson, who had worked with Wiens before becoming head brewer at Highland Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina; and Sean Brennan, who had been head of production at Northern United Brewing Co., in Dexter, Michigan.
Despite the talent of the Guinness brewers in Dublin, “the brewers here in the states are pushing envelopes further and faster than just about any industry,” Wagner said. “If you are trying to be a part of the American craft beer industry, it’s tough to do that from an ocean away.”[…]
