Brooklyn’s Other Half Brewing Co. says it will open a brewery in Fishtown
Other Half, known for its distinctive beers, is taking over the brewery left by Goose Island Brewhouse, which closed in December 2020.
Other Half Brewing Co. — which has picked up a following while expanding from its Brooklyn base into upstate New York and Washington, D.C. — will take over the shuttered Goose Island Brewhouse in Fishtown.
Opening is penciled in for later this year, the company told The Inquirer.
Other Half is best known for hazy IPAs, pastry stouts, and fruit-packed sours, some of which carry such names as Laid Back Peach Sour IPA, Double Forever Cashmere, and More Simcoe Than All Simcoe.
Other Half cofounder Andrew Burman confirmed the deal on Monday, days after an orange liquor-license transfer was posted on the building at 1002 Canal St., across from Punch Line, the Fillmore, Philadelphia Distilling, and the forthcoming Brooklyn Bowl. Earlier Monday, the website BreweriesinPa.com posted a guess that Other Half was behind the license transfer, based on the name of its corporate entity, OH PA LLC.
“Philadelphia has a long and robust brewing history and when the opportunity presented itself to open an Other Half location here — in between our D.C. and NYC breweries — we couldn’t pass it up,” Burman said in a statement to The Inquirer. “The bones of the space are great and over the coming months, we’ll refresh the indoor and outdoor areas and work on sourcing food partners.”
Realtor Paige Jaffe of Jones Lang LaSalle, who represented the building owner, said the property was in “high demand. Interest levels proved that Fishtown is high on many operators’ radars.”
Fishtown also will see openings in 2021 from Source Farmhouse Brewery (taking the former Fishtown Brewpub at 1101 Frankford Ave.) and a new location of Brewery ARS, at 2223 Frankford Ave.
Burman founded Other Half in 2014 with Sam Richardson and Matt Monahan, all of whom had an interest in making fresh beers that would be sold locally. Their website explains the name: “The craft beer industry is often made up of sameness: predictable styles, formulaic taprooms, and a homogeneous culture. Some of it is good and some of it not so good. Either way, we’re not that.”
Almost from its inception, Other Half drew a following, and curiously became a darling of Wall Street bros. In 2017, the drinks publication Punch wrote, “If wine-obsessed Wall Streeters were once said to favor wines that were ‘big, bold and brash’ to match their own personalities, Other Half’s beers fit the bill: potent, aromatic and juicy — you don’t particularly need a connoisseur’s palate to enjoy them.”
Chicago-based Goose Island, a unit of Anheuser-Busch InBev, opened its Fishtown location in March 2018 in a 10,500-square-foot building that formerly was a dry-ice plant. It closed in December 2020, a pandemic casualty.