As we work our way through the last, fleeting moments of 2025, rocketing toward a brand-new 365-day span, we’re pausing to look back on the year that was. It’s a San Diego Beer News tradition to reveal the 25 news stories that garnered the most engagement among our readership (not including standard fare about events and beer competitions results or features such as our travel guides, Beer of the Week pieces and brewery-staff spotlights). But there was so much going on in the local brewing community over the past 12 months, that we decided to take things further, presenting the top 50 articles. The following are numbers 41 through 50.
50. Mason replacing Border X in Barrio Logan
February 5, 2025
Last year, facing a crippling financial shortfall, Border X Brewing shuttered its Barrio Logan tasting room. It appeared to be the end for the Hispanic-owned beer concern, which was founded in Otay Mesa in 2013, but the parent company of Mason Ale Works negotiated a takeover of the brand and the Barrio Logan location. Shortly after that deal was announced, it fell apart. Instead of reviving the venue under Border X’s flag, it was reopened as a Mason taproom. Border X subsequently went out of business, though its spin-off brewery, Mujeres Brew House, remains open in Barrio Logan.
49. Beer Briefs: New digs, eastern expansion and some BLAH news
November 18, 2025
In September, Oceanside-based Black Plague Brewing abruptly shuttered, leaving Head Brewer Aeryk Heeg looking for a new gig. Respected in the brewing community, he was picked up by Harland Brewing, which hired him to fill its opening for a lead brewer. Meanwhile in Ramona, wanting to convert their location into a production-only facility, the owners of Smoking Cannon Brewery secured a Main Street storefront a block away to serve as its new tasting room. And in Normal Heights, Blind Lady Ale House‘sposted notice of an application for an ownership change signaled a change of the existing owners’ corporate documents versus a sale of the business. Whew!
48. Mission accomplished in Miramar
February 25, 2025
In 2024, Mission Brewing purchased Miramar’s Rough Draft Brewing. In doing so, it immediately took over that company’s public venues at UCSD’s Mesa Nueva campus housing building and the SkyDeck collective’s shared Brewer’s Deck rooftop space in Del Mar Highlands. Mission also moved production out of its longtime East Village headquarters and into Rough Draft’s Miramar facility. The last step for the company – and one of the most important – was getting the taproom open at its new base of operations. It took a while, but that space debuted to the public on the last day of February.
47. Asylum Brewing’s incoming “North Park Sanitarium”
July 7, 2025
In recent years, numerous Orange County brewing companies have signed leases on vacated taprooms in San Diego County, looking to extend their brands’ reach into the Capital of Craft. One such business was Anaheim-based Asylum Brewing, which ended up having greater ties to the area than other OC concerns, as company founder Tommy Sebestyen lives in North Park, mere blocks from the 1,700-square-foot venue he took over after Black Plague Brewing moved out, finding it just as difficult to turn a profit there as original brewery tenant Rouleur Brewing.
46. One week remaining for Five Suits Brewing
July 18, 2025
In April 2024, the owners of Five Suits Brewing announced their Vista business was for sale. For more than a year they fielded inquiries from entrepreneurs interested in purchasing the turnkey space. This July they were preparing to hand over the keys and announce a buyer who wanted to keep the brand’s name and usher it into a new and prosperous era, but that individual ended up being unable to qualify for the lease, leaving ownership with no choice but to close up shop, but not before holding a pair of blowout “curtain calls” for their regulars.
45. Local pub repeats as country’s best beer bar
March 5, 2025
In 2024, fans of Kearny Mesa’s O’Brien’s Pub rocked the vote in a big way, taking to the internet in droves to voice their support for the San Diego suds staple. That effort led to the venue being named the Best Beer Bar in America by USA Today. It was a huge honor for the pub, which has been in operation for 31 years and helped convert many drinkers into craft-beer fans (and brewing industry professionals) over that span. So was repeating as Best Beer Bar in 2025, again thanks to the many people the venerable space has touched during its reign on Convoy Street.
44. Two local beer ops welcome experienced brewers
March 12, 2025
While it’s hard to find silver linings when breweries go out of business, in some cases it provides other brewing outfits the opportunity to hire proven talent. Such was the case for tribal-owned-and-operated Valley Center concern Rincon Reservation Road Brewery, which brought on WestBrew’s former head brewer to lead its fermentation operations. And while Ten-75 Brewing’s closure is temporary as its owner and head brewer works to meet City of San Marcos building regulations, he is currently tending to the beer program at Dos Desperados Brewery, following the company’s longtime head brewer departure to start his own beer biz, Weir Beer Co.
43. Barrel & Stave moving out of CoLab Public House
June 6, 2025
In 2022, a Southern California development group opened a two-story, 12,500-square-foot beverage collective in Vista, which had three brewery tenants sharing a communal brewhouse while operating individual tasting bars on the main floor. Since then, two of those tenants have moved out. The most recent was three-year-old Barrel & Stave Brewing, a beer-making extension of a family of beer bars with locations in Fullerton and Temecula, which has spent the past six months in search of a site in coastal North County where it can set up its own brewing facility.
42. South O Brewing gets into the restaurant business
May 13, 2025
When the owner of South O Brewing brought on a partner with 25 years of restaurant experience, it wasn’t long before that newcomer altered the trajectory of the business, working with the owner of nearby Pacific Coast Spirits to take over the 3,000-square-foot restaurant built into its Coast Highway headquarters. With an inventive fusion-laced menu, craft-cocktail program and taps pouring South O beers, the eatery earned good feedback early. Despite that, just two months in, the owners abruptly shuttered the venue.
41. The book on Thorn Street, Thorn & Little Bird Brewing
July 29, 2025
There was much confusion when the owners of Thorn Street Brewery and Thorn Brewing sold the brand rights for the latter to Latitude Brewing, and as a result, were forced to change the name of the former and its beers in order to avoid marketplace confusion. In this piece, Thorn Street co-founder Dan Carrico provided specifics, including the inspiration behind the new name, Little Bird Brewing, as well as refinement of longstanding recipes and an upcoming remodel of their 12-year-old North Park brewery and tasting room.