Farewell to Bridgeport Brewing Company

USA | It is a pity. Portland’s longest-running craft brewery, BridgePort, has closed for good. After ceasing production at its brewery in February, its pub was shuttered on 10 March 2019.

The brewery is Portland’s oldest, having opened in 1984, shortly before Widmer’s, when craft brewing was still called micro brewing and no one could foresee that craft beer would eventually revolutionise the industry.

BridgePort was founded by Richard and Nancy Ponzi of Ponzi Vineyards under its original name, Columbia River Brewing, and opened the pub side of the business in 1986. The Gambrinus Company from Texas, which also owns the Shiner Brewery in Shiner, Texas, and the Trumer Brewery in Berkeley, California, acquired BridgePort in 1995 and greatly expanded its brewing capacity to 110,000 hl in 2001.

BridgePort’s demise is doubly sad because it had long been a fixture in Portland’s beer landscape, while its IPA, formulated by the Australian brewer-turned-vintner Phil Sexton, used to be the gold standard for IPAs.  

At its peak, in 2011, Bridgeport sold 60,000 hl beer across 18 states, which dropped to 13,000 hl in 2018 across Oregon and a few other states.

The firm was reorganised in 2017, leading to 13 job losses, in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but the turnaround proved impossible – obviously – and all Gambrinus could do was to call it quits.

Announcing its closure on Facebook, BridgePort cited declining sales and the “extremely competitive craft beer market of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest” as reasons. According to Brewbound, 87 employees will be retrenched and receive severance packages.

It seems that BridgePort has been suffering the fate of several other legacy craft breweries – it has been around for too long to successfully compete with all those recent start-ups on “novelty” and coolness. Today’s beer enthusiasts have developed a thirst for the newest, the most obscure, and the most unobtainable beers.

What is more, as an older brand, BridgePort has failed to attract younger drinkers in a market that is getting more and more crowded. There are currently 58 breweries in Portland and another 84 in the Portland metro area, serving 650,000 or so inhabitants.

Media say that BridgePort is sharing the fate of other craft breweries during a period of what could be considered a “market correction” (ah, those euphemisms), following a craft brewing “bubble”. In recent months reportedly three Portland craft breweries have closed.

Also, in January, Craft Brew Alliance closed its Widmer Brothers pub after 22 years of operation, and this past November, FIFCO USA closed its Portland Brewing taproom after more than 30 years of operation. Unlike BridgePort, however, those brands are still being brewed elsewhere, according to Brewbound.

As one commentator wrote, for their pioneering work and for their consistent, comparatively subtle beers, BridgePort’s absence will be felt.