In July, Little Miss Brewing co-owner Greg Malkin announced his company’s acquisition of a 10,000-square-foot industrial-zoned building in Logan Heights. Located two miles east of downtown San Diego, it will house a 30-barrel brewhouse that will produce enough beer to supply Little Miss’s octet of tasting rooms throughout San Diego County. That demand is currently met via contract-brewing relationships with other local brewing concerns, to the tune of 3,500 barrels of beer per year.
Little Miss plans to produce 7,000 barrels during its first 12 months in Logan Heights. From there, Malkin hopes to increase annual barrelage by 50-80% each year. On top of increased production capabilities, the new location has enough space for offices, storage and a public tasting room, which is projected to open by January 2023. With room all of that under one, much larger roof, the Logan Heights facility will serve as Little Miss’s new base of operations, allowing Malkin to make the company’s current headquarters in Miramar available for sale or lease.
“Our current facility is well suited for a startup, a company looking to increase production capacity or a brewery that is currently paying high rates at another location and wants to lower its rent,” says Malkin, who foresees several months of overlap, during which Little Miss will make use of both its production sites as it makes the transition to Logan Heights. “Once Logan Heights is online, we will need to dial in the system to make sure that we’ll be able to produce beer there full-time before selling or subleasing our Miramar space.”
The 4,000-square-foot space is equipped with a two-vessel, 10-barrel brewhouse (which can be pushed to produce 12-barrel batches), six 30-barrel fermenters, a pair of 40-barrel fermenters, a 10-barrel and 7-barrel fermenter, and a 10-barrel Unitank. Little Miss currently produces around 3,500 barrels of beer a year in Miramar, but Malkin says if the system were operated six-to-seven days a week it could max out between 4,000 and 4,200 barrels.
“The Miramar facility has an oversized, 800-square-foot fully equipped walk-in cold-box that has always provided more than enough space for us and all our tasting rooms,” says Malkin. “Opening a brewery is more than just buying equipment. More than half the expense stems from installing that equipment. Plus, there are the headaches of waiting for approvals from the government. If I had a do-over for opening Little Miss, I would have seriously considered buying a brewing location that already existed. There are a lot of unknowns otherwise.”
Little Miss devotes 1,000 square feet of the Miramar location for its tasting-room area, which includes an L-shaped bar outfitted with nine taps. Offices and restrooms comprise an additional 800 square feet.
“My preference is to sell the Miramar facility, primarily because subleasing would put us in the position of being landlords, which is a business that’s completely separate from brewing. That said, we are open to subleasing the brewery,” says Malkin. “Any deal will include our brewers explaining how to use the system and brewing a few times with the buyer or subleaser, and we’ll always be available to answer questions or provide assistance.”
Malkin says he will also entertain an alternating proprietorship or selling the equipment at the Miramar location. Parties interested in purchasing or leasing Little Miss’s Miramar facility or equipment are invited to contact Malkin via email.
Little Miss Brewing’s production facility is located at 7949 Stromesa Court, Suite Y, in Miramar