Over the past five years, Resident Brewing has enjoyed steady growth and solid engagement from craft-beer consumers, particularly fans of hazy IPAs. Part of that has to do with the downtown brewpub’s exposure at nearby Petco Park as well as its sister restaurants throughout the county. The result of reaching and turning on the masses was Resident quickly outgrowing its 10-barrel brewery. For the past few years, owner James Langley has spent a great deal of time searching for a larger manufacturing facility, while relying on a contract-brewing partnership with Coronado Brewing. During that span, he scoured North County, turning over rocks all along State Route 78 with little success. But the perfect spot became available earlier this year when, after a decade in the beer industry, Iron Fist Brewing shut down. Next week, Resident expects to close on that spot and is poised to expand in a big way.
“We had stopped looking to buy and build to-suit a year-and-a-half ago, because financing opportunities for breweries had disappeared. We missed that window by a year,” says Langley. “Banks had been really hot on doing deals with breweries, but after watching many mistakes in the craft-beer world and learning most brewing companies have substantial debt, banks were done with the brewery game. We decided we needed to start focusing on buying a pre-existing brewery where the occupants have grown out of their space or decided it wasn’t for them.”
During their search, Langley and Brewmaster Robert Masterson compiled a detailed list of specifications regarding production equipment. To their surprise, most of the sites they toured failed to meet them, to the point they didn’t feel confident they would be able to brew beer to their standards. But when they were tipped off to Iron Fist’s brewery and tasting room hitting the market and took a look, the facility checked all of their boxes. And being debt-free, the Resident team was able to immediately jump on the opportunity and secure the space.
“It’s amazing to be able to do something like this during this crazy time,” says Langley, who is excited to switch gears from a packaging perspective now that Resident will have its own canning line. “Changing to canning is going to be impactful and allow us to get our beer into stores. We’ve been mostly focused on tap handles until now. Petco Park pushed us into cans, which was awesome, but we were limited in space.”
That is no longer a problem. Acquisition of the Vista facility gives them 15,000 square feet to work with and will greatly enhance production capabilities. Last year, Resident maxed out its production downtown, brewing 2,000 barrels. That was supplemented by 1,100 barrels of its beers brewed at Coronado Brewing’s Bay Park facility. This year, the company is on pace to have a barrelage of 2,400, with around 1,700 of that produced downtown. But in 2021, Resident hopes to produce more than 5,000 barrels, canning much of that to meet demand, not only locally, but throughout California and in Arizona’s metropolitan areas.
Eventually, the downtown brewery will be converted to a pilot operation that will produce in the neighborhood of 1,000 barrels annually. The tasting room in the back of The Local Eatery and Drinking Hole, a sister-interest the brewery abuts will remain in operation as-is, and its style will be mirrored at its Vista counterpart.
The Resident team are going to retrofit Iron Fist’s former tasting room, installing a reverse osmosis water filtration system and new cold box, but alterations made to public-facing elements figure to be the most significant. Langley’s hospitality savvy and experience are driving those elements.
We are close to putting a coffee shop from Carlsbad’s Leap Coffee Roasters in the tasting room, and I think we can do some cool collaborative stuff with coffee and beer. We’re also going to buy a food truck that we’re going to own, so we can build something that pairs well with the beers we’re making and something we can customize to cater towards different events. Pizza day, high-end gourmet day, dinner pairings—all kinds of things. It’ll be really cool and fun.”
James Langley, Owner, Resident Brewing
The hope is that Resident’s Vista facility can appeal to workers in its complex and the numerous business parks surrounding it, as well as beer enthusiasts making specific pilgrimages to the tasting room. But the Resident team is also happy to soon be able to have its wares available in greater quantities around its new home base.
“We’re excited to be going into North County. The demand for Resident beer there is huge and, currently, it’s hard for our one delivery driver to go up there and hit a bunch of accounts, so we have to be choosy and rotate a lot,” says Langley. “Giving access to so many people who love our beer but can’t get it…I’m fired up about that.”
Resident Brewing’s current tasting room is located inside The Local Eatery and Drinking Hole at 1065 Fourth Avenue in downtown, and its future facility is located at 1305 Hot Springs Way, #101, in Vista