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People · Places · Beers · Stories
Brewery history, the people who made it, the places it happened, and the evidence behind every record.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Beer history · 17 October 1814
On 17 October 1814 a vat failed at the Horse Shoe Brewery and porter poured into St Giles. Eight people died. The name sounds comic; the event was an industrial disaster.
London · 17 October 1814 · Published
Read the story and its sources →The Longboard you drink in Kailua-Kona is brewed by an independent craft brewery. The Longboard you drink in Ohio belongs to Anheuser-Busch. Same name, same wave on the label — and the ocean between them was drawn by the Department of Justice.
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More than 300 breweries in the archive closed between 2020 and 2026 — nearly four times the whole of the 2010s — and the count climbs every year. Directories delete a closure the day it happens. This is what they deleted, and what moved into the room.
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Confirmed closureClosed 2025
Hilden Brewing Co.Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
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Confirmed: the public record is marked closed and cites a source. Recorded: marked closed, source still to be tied. Proposed: announced but not yet happened.
Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, Spaten, Hofbräu — the only six breweries allowed to pour at Oktoberfest, six different ways a brewery survives two centuries, and the festival beer that turned from amber to gold while nobody was looking.
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Calgary Brewing & Malting imported seed barley from Ontario, handed it to Alberta farmers, and guaranteed them 25% over market price to plant it.
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Historical event · from 1916
Alberta went dry in 1916. The brewery did not close — it made something legal, and sent the rest to Saskatchewan.
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Historical event · antiquity
Mesopotamian and Egyptian records show beer issued as part of workers' rations. Before direct deposit there were grain rations — and sometimes they arrived fermented.
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Bubbles rise. So why does a settling stout look like it is pouring downward? Because a pint glass is a fluid-dynamics experiment you can drink.
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That dank IPA is not imagining things. Humulus lupulus and cannabis share a plant family, and some of the same aromatic chemistry.
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Carbonation only behaves because gravity makes it. Remove gravity and the pint has to be redesigned — bubbles, container and all.
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One Fairfax address, three breweries in twenty-eight years; a Regina brewery closed in 2002 whose address brewed again in 2025; churches, fire halls, petrol stations and a Navy warehouse. The site layer read for what a building does after the company is gone.
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Nine breweries in one Alpine valley, cooled by cracks in the mountainside, and a modern brewery carrying a historic name that is not the same company.
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Ask the archive · Beta
Who owns this brewery? Is it independent? When did it close? Each answer is researched and checked by hand, cites its sources and names what is still unknown. They are written in advance — nothing on this site generates an answer while you wait.
IllustrationBreweriesActive · historic · closed10,990 records →
IllustrationBeersCurrent · retired · historic28,345 records →
IllustrationOwnershipFounders · acquisitions · lineages2,519 dated events →
IllustrationPlacesBrewhouses · taprooms · what stood here2,469 sites →
IllustrationFrom land to glassBarley · growers · maltsters · the chainFollow the chain →
IllustrationBefore 1900The oldest houses, oldest first863 breweries →
IllustrationObjects & documentsBottles · labels · photographs165 objects →
IllustrationStoriesTally's Take · discoveries47 stories →
IllustrationOpen questions10,479 things the archive does not know yetEvery gap is a named question, not a blank. Send what you know and the record improves, credited to you.See the open questions →
