USA, CA: Barley Forge Brewing Co. to close its doors by end of October

After five years, Barley Forge Brewing Co., the first brewery in Costa Mesa, will be closed by the end of October, OCRegister reported on September 27.

There’s no set date for its last day but the lease is scheduled to expire on Thursday, Oct. 31 and there are no plans to move.

“Building out a brewery costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and typically it takes a year or more just to get through the permitting process. You can’t just pick up and move,” said Mary Ann Frericks, who opened Barley Forge with her husband Greg Nylen, and Kevin Buckley, director of brewing operations, in 2014.

The lease factors into this closure. It’s up for renewal at a significant increase in rent and the brewery’s proprietors are not in agreement with the landlord on its terms. Another consideration in the decision to shutter was the brewery’s location in an area in transition.

“We’re in a neighborhood that’s changed radically in five years and is much less conducive to industrial use than it was. It’s more of a retail hub now,” Frericks said.

Since Barley Forge began brewing, Gunwhale Ales, Bootlegger’s Brewery and Salty Bear Brewing Co. have also opened in the SoBeca district.

But Barley Forge was the vanguard. “We were unique in that we had a restaurant. It’s fairly uncommon for a craft brewery to have a restaurant,” Frericks said. “That was kind of not in our initial vision at all but the city said no food trucks and no outside food so we had to have a kitchen. It turned out great in many ways.”

Nylen, a lawyer who cut back to practicing part-time in order to create the brewery, has no regrets. A home brewer for 25 years, and a former musician who played in Irish bands during the 1990s, he was able to live out a couple of fantasies with Barley Forge. “The Orange County Mashups — they started in our tasting room and they meet there every month. They’re a fantastic homebrewing community that we had a really great relationship with. I’m proud of fostering that,” he said.

And as more places ended their live music policies, Nylen thought it was especially important to support the scene. “We had Grammy award winners in our place at different times and it was great. And all genres of jazz from hot club jazz up through the cool jazz era, modern jazz and everything in between, big bands, you name it.”

Looking back, Nylen gives his wife much of the credit for the brewery’s biggest accomplishments, saying she “put her life on hold” to focus on the business. “I’m most proud of her and everything that she did for the brewery and all the sacrifices she made,” he said.

Her efforts and those of the brew crew and sales team helped Barley Forge earn acclaim, he said, ticking off its accolades. It was voted one of the top three craft breweries in the Orange County Register’s Best of O.C. 2018, it garnered praise from local publications and bloggers, and won national awards in 2018 including a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival for Grandpa Tractor, a Dortmunder style lager, and a silver medal at the World Beer Cup for The Patsy, a coconut rye stout.

Closing its doors is bittersweet for Barley Forge’s owners, especially as legions of fans have been reaching out on social media. “We had a phenomenal run,” Mary Ann said. “It has been so heartwarming to see how deeply our tasting room resonated with so many people.”

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .