Few, if any, local businesses better illustrate the ups and downs of the modern craft beer industry as Ballast Point Brewing.
Opened as a tiny fermentation operation in the back of a homebrew supply store in a Morena strip-mall in 1996, the business grew by leaps and bounds in the coming decades, opening a sizable brewery in Scripps Ranch that was later supplanted by a Miramar facility boasting the greatest production capacity of any San Diego County brewing company.
Highlighted by its flagship IPA, Sculpin, Ballast Point’s beers became ubiquitous fixtures at bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, and event centers, not just locally, but across the country. Simultaneously, the company erected its own brewhouse-equipped venues in Temecula, Long Beach, Chicago, and Daleville, Virginia, increasing its footprint and manufacturing capabilities to up its appeal to potential buyers in an era where macro-beer conglomerates such as Anheuser-Busch InBev and Miller Coors were acquiring craft brands to both disrupt and compete within the craft-beer space.
Then came the 2015 sale that rocked the industry, with Constellation Brands purchasing Ballast Point for $1 billion. It was a move the multinational alcohol behemoth would regret. The acquired brand tanked under Constellation’s watch, to the point where the corporation offloaded it for a small fraction of what it paid just four years later. The buyer this time around was a group of investors united by the founders of a small Illinois beer concern called Kings & Convicts Brewing.
Ballast Point’s new owners sought to get the company back on track by repairing its worn reputation, starting with beer fans in San Diego. Those efforts were soon thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which switched Kings & Convicts from rehabilitating the company’s image to survival mode. In the four years that have passed, Kings & Convicts has acquired production and public facilities only to eventually relinquish them and has sold Ballast Point’s Miramar headquarters to bicoastal non-alcoholic beer company Athletic Brewing. (Ballast Point maintains operation of the Miramar location’s on-site bar and restaurant.)
Under Kings & Convicts, Ballast Point’s place of origin, Home Brew Mart, was expanded to 8,500 square feet following the acquisition of a next-door suite. Much of the new space was devoted to an expansive tasting room stocked with Ballast Point beers, including numerous small-batch creations brewed in-house. While the offerings and aesthetics of the venue were objectively better, the second coming of Home Brew Mart largely failed to resonate with patrons who had known – and preferred – it in its previous iterations as a no-frills outlet for amateur brewers looking to pick up ingredients for their next brew and possibly partake in tasters of whatever ales and lagers the store’s staffers had cooked up.
Looking to consolidate its physical assets and right-size the organization for the current marketplace, Home Brew Mart was a sore thumb in Kings & Convicts inventory. Upon making the decision to offload the property, its owners didn’t need to look far for a buyer, as a former employee who managed Home Brew Mart from 2015 to 2021, was eager to take it off their hands. That individual, Jim Johnson, self-financed the purchase of the storied space and has spent the past six months working with its longtime employees (all of whom he kept aboard following the acquisition) to get it back to its roots.
“Home Brew Mart has been important to me for nearly 20 years, as a place to connect something I enjoy with people who make it possible. And during my time as general manager, we made a work family here,” says Johnson. “I was presented with a dual opportunity to maintain Home Brew Mart for San Diego and maintain jobs for my family. That means a lot considering that, between all of us, we have about 50 years of experience working here.”
Home Brew Mart has had its fair share of influential employees over the years, some of whom have gone on to work in the brewing industry, open their own breweries, and win awards for their beers. On the other side of the counter, many of the county’s brewery owners – many of whom are recognized far beyond San Diego – purchased their first homebrew kits and sought advice on how to utilize them and myriad ingredients at Home Brew Mart.
It has been painful for local beer fans to see the luster of this historic spot dulled, but under Johnson, Home Brew Mart has undergone the type of return to form that could only be realized by people as experienced and invested as him and his veteran squad. It was all about getting lean, surrendering the venue’s added strip-mall suite to get down to 4,200 square feet, and doing so as quickly as possible.
“Our first order of business was to get the doors open again,” says Johnson. “The transition required some landlord negotiations, so we were locked out for the month of June, but we were able to reopen for retail sales on July 5. It took a while longer to get things in place to return to draft service.”
Johnson and his team made the most of the down time, working at a rapid pace to install new cold storage, clean and upgrade the venue’s brewhouse, reconfigure the space, conduct inventory, and reorganize the store. By October, beers were being produced and tapped on-site. Those brand-new creations and revived Home Brew Mart classics were conceived and produced by Home Brew Mart’s employees, as well as a cavalcade of local brewers eager to lend elbow grease to Johnson’s revival mission. Many of those brewers previously worked for Ballast Point or, in some cases, Home Brew Mart.
Home Brew Mart’s line of beginner and advanced-level homebrewing classes have also made their return. They are held twice a month in the brewery, which takes up about a quarter of the business’ total footprint and doubles as a private event space. Johnson sees the educational aspect of what Home Brew Mart has to offer as a cornerstone that’s helped build the county’s craft-beer community into what most consider the finest in the world.
San Diego is the capital of craft, in large part, because Home Brew Mart has been supporting the craft of brewing for more than 32 years. We’re all aware of the impact of craft beer to the local economy and landscape over the past 10 or 15 years, but less visible is the nation’s largest and winningest homebrew club, San Diego’s QUAFF, as well as the Society of Barley Engineers, Tijuana Homebrew Club, local unaffiliated members of the American Homebrewers Association and more. Home Brew Mart supports a community of people passionate about doing things for themselves and vice versa.”
Jim Johnson, Owner, Home Brew Mart
This year, QUAFF (Quality Ale & Fermentation Fraternity) was named the Homebrew Club of the Year at the National Homebrew Competition, a feat the group also accomplished nine times between 2001 and 2018. A significant percentage of the brewers whose amateur beers helped earn QUAFF those crowns have gone on to helm their own breweries, including AleSmith Brewing, Five Suits Brewing, Nickel Beer Co. and Rip Current Brewing, to name but a few.
As one might expect, members of the homebrewing community have been particularly enthusiastic about Johnson’s efforts to restore Home Brew Mart to what it once was, but so, too, have craft-beer enthusiasts who have little-to-no interest in recreational fermentation.
“People have been universally supportive. ‘This is the best beer news of the year,’ has been a common refrain and I’m humbled by the response,” says Johnson. “I’m eager to place Home Brew Mart back in the center of San Diego’s beer scene. It’s where people can come to nerd out, whether it’s someone who makes awesome beer or who’s investigating what makes beer awesome.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the Business section of the Sunday, December 29, 2024 edition of The San Diego Union-Tribune