Brewerytown’s only brewery is closing

Girard Avenue’s Crime & Punishment Brewing is closing April 12, the Brewerytown business announced last week. Owner and brewer Mike Paul cited a combination of strained finances and exhaustion in the decision to close the tiny rowhouse brewery after a 10-year run.

“Every pallet of grain, every pallet of cans, we have to disassemble and carry inside one bag at a time into the basement and then back up to brew beer with — which was fine when I was 25,” said Paul, who is now 37.

Crime & Punishment launched in 2015, with seven owners (five remain). It was the first brewery to open in Brewerytown since the short-lived Red Bell Brewing closed in 2002. The neighborhood got its name around the turn of the 20th century, when more than a dozen breweries operated in the wedge of the city between 25th and 33rd Streets and Girard and Glenwood Avenues.

When the Russian literature-inspired brewery came online, Philly and the rest of the country were in the midst of a craft beer boom — breweries opened at a rate of 1.5 a day in 2014, according to the Brewers Association. Crime & Punishment’s brewers, Mike Paul and Mike Wambolt, met during the heady days of Philly Beer Week, which at the time animated bars across the city and attracted top breweries from around the world. The event still exists today (it kicks off May 30 this year) but is a shadow of its former self.

Paul emphasized how drastically the culture around alcohol has shifted in a decade in an interview with The Inquirer. “The drinking landscape has changed. There’s all these other options, like ready-to-drink mixed drinks in cans, wine and cider and craft liquor and non-alcoholic beverages,” he said. “People are just drinking and consuming alcohol with a different mentality.

“If macro beer was our dad’s beer … I think maybe beer, or alcohol in general, is like ‘dad’s thing’ to the younger generation,” he said, alluding to other craft breweries that have closed in the area.

Over 10 years, Crime & Punishment cranked out more than 500 batches of beer from its 7-barrel brewhouse — including memorable hits like Disturbing the Beets, a wild ale tinted with beet juice; the Grod Inquisitor, a Polish-style sour made with oak-smoked wheat; and Space Race, a hazy IPA brewed with oats. Its small kitchen served up Eastern European dishes, like homemade pelmeni (dumplings), kielbasa sandwiches, and pickle bowls. Producing just 350 barrels of beer per year, the neighborhood brewery never aspired to get into distribution — something that has led other breweries to overextend themselves financially.

“We weren’t really interested in this sort of ever-expanding brewery,” Paul said. “We were just gonna be a brewpub with the Russian-flair food and beers over the bar.” But the rising popularity canned beer, abetted by Instagram posts of cleverly designed labels, convinced Paul and Wambolt (who left the area a couple years ago) to invest in a canning line.

“[We] were working to build a canning line at one point, and then over COVID we actually just bought one,” Paul said. “But the margin on pints over the bar is really where craft beer does well, and canning it is just very inefficient.”

Perpetually up-and-coming Brewerytown has also changed, Paul said. “There was always a lot of talk — probably unrealistic — that [Brewerytown] was the next Northern Liberties or Fishtown,” he said, adding that he has seen much more development in the last three or four years. In the last six months, the neighborhood got an acclaimed bakery and a much-anticipated Filipino all-day cafe, which build on momentum created by small businesses like Rybrew sandwich and bottle shop, Otto’s Taproom & Grille, Cafe Don Pedro coffee roasters, Spot Burgers, and Together Skateboarding & Coffee.

The uptick in development hasn’t necessarily helped the brewery’s business, though. “Brewerytown was a very affordable, nice post-college spot for a lot of people … but I think that all changed with the development that happened. A lot of the people that are living there now, I really don’t see them coming into Crime & Punishment,” Paul said. “Maybe they’re there because of being close to Fairmount Park, or access to 76 [or downtown] … I think it’s a different kind of person that’s moving in that’s maybe not interested in the Girard Avenue culture.”

Paul has seen the closure coming for about a year and a half; he informed staff two months ago of the timeline for winding down the business. He and the remaining four other owners are selling the property at 2711 W. Girard Ave. (He declined to provide details on the buyer.) Once again, Brewerytown will be without a brewery.

“Crime & Punishment did offer a lot to that neighborhood,” said Paul, who is planning a career change and looking forward to spending more time with his family. “I feel kind of sad that it’s gonna not be there for people.”