Sad days indeed when the local homebrew store shuts down. The slow demise of Surf Brewery had a fork stuck in it when it was sold a couple months ago. Usually the pioneers are the ones to suffer. Surf opened about 6 years ago and was the first production brewery in Ventura.  Anacapa has been open 15 plus years but is just a small brewbup and the scene was ready for the tasting room model and, for me anyway, a full homebrew shop. Unfortunately, sounds like the debt was getting to them and add to that a few bad brewers over the years and with the ownership under stress, sold to some folks from LA who Surf was contract brewing for (news to me they were contract brewing but what do I know).

Anyhow, the new ownership doesn’t seem to care to much about the local homebrewing community. I walked in there about a month ago and a sign said homebrew shop was under reconstruction. A week later I’m told to go online. I go online the store is unusable, or they are just trying to offload the old inventory. Too bad, it was the only thing keeping that place on the radar for the large homebrewing community in the larger Ventura/Oxnard/Camarillo area.

Funny,  I was in Made West down the street a week later and all the Surf locals were in there. RIP Surf. Oh yeah, using Morebeer now. Substantially cheaper than ABInBevs’ Northern Brewer. Another RIP.