USA, CA: Fort Point Beer Company merging with Rosa’s HenHouse Brewing Co. and moving all its operations up to Sonoma County

San Francisco’s famed microbrewery Fort Point Beer Company won’t exactly be a San Francisco microbrewery anymore, as it’s merging with Santa Rosa’s HenHouse Brewing Co. and moving all its operations up to Sonoma County, SFist reported on April 15.

In the now ten years it’s been around, the Presidio's Fort Point Beer Company has become San Francisco's biggest independent craft beer brewery — though that’s mostly because their largest competitors have been bought up by international conglomerates or just plain gone out of business for the time being. And today we wake to the news of another merger in the craft beer industry, as the Chronicle reports that Fort Point, makers of the popular local brews KSA, Villager, Westfalia, and Animal IPA, is merging with Santa Rosa’s HenHouse Brewing Co., and moving its beer production up north to Sonoma County.

“Teaming up makes us stronger and allows us to continue doing what we do best–together: making fresh, balanced, award-winning beers & ciders in the Bay Area for generations to come,” the two breweries said in a joint Instagram post Tuesday. “While our teams will be working side by side, not much will change for you, and we think that’s a really good thing. Each brewery will continue on as the independent craft beer company you know and love.”

“That’s how we make this a sustainable long-term Bay Area business,” Fort Point co-founder Justin Catalana added in remarks to the Chronicle, “and not be one of the many breweries that’s gone out of business in the last few years.”

Per the Chronicle, the two combined breweries will produce 40,000 barrels of beer annually, and will be the fifth-largest craft brewery in the Northern California region. Only one employee total will be laid off (both breweries collectively employ 62 people). But Fort Point will be leaving the Presidio in SF, and moving its production to HenHouse’s Santa Rosa facility.

Fort Point insists that nothing is going to change with their beer, nor with their taprooms at the Ferry Building and on Valencia Street. For their part, HenHouse has taprooms in Novato and Petaluma, in addition to their Santa Rosa brewery that puts out a couple dozen different beers.

“HenHouse will still be HenHouse-y, and Fort Point will still be Fort Point-y,” HenHouse co-founder Collin McDonnell said to the Chronicle.

The two breweries had apparently been sharing advice collaboratively during COVID, and eventually decided to join forces and merge in talks that have played out over the last few years.

“Everybody’s seen the mergers that don’t go well — the breweries that used to be cool, and now they’re not cool,” McDonnell added. “But I hope that we are creating a road map for what other breweries can do to achieve economic sustainability during what is a really weird time to be in beer.”

This "weird time," as many in the beer industry know, is one in which costs of production are rising while the domestic beer market has been contracting, leading to a national shakeout in the previously booming craft beer industry. Both beer and wine sales have been in decline in the US for several years, as more younger drinkers opt for low-calorie hard seltzers, spirits, and non-alcoholic options.

Locally, this led to the merger of Drake's Brewing Co. with Bear Republic in 2023, the acquisition of Rare Barrel Brewing by Cellarmaker several months earlier, and the demise of both the Magnolia Brewing and Anchor Brewing brands — both of which were acquired by big conglomerates before being shut down. Anchor Brewing is being revived soon at the hands of billionaire Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya; and Magnolia, meanwhile, has come back at small scale in its original Haight digs under new ownership.

For Fort Point, this merger is probably a wise cost-cutting move — though still, it's sad to lose Fort Point's production presence in San Francisco. But the brewery teases in their announcement that they may be coming back to SF in some capacity.

“It’s bittersweet to say the least, that’s where Fort Point grew up and perfected all our recipes, but we’re thinking of it more as ‘see you later’ than ‘goodbye,’” the Instagram post says. “Fort Point is starting the search for a new home for R&D in SF, maybe even back in the same neighborhood.”

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