Mystery Brewing Closes Its Doors In North Carolina

Mystery, Mystery Brewing Closes Its Doors In North Carolina

Hillsborough, North Carolina’s Mystery Brewing has announced that it will be closing on October 31st, ending a six year run that began with a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Founded in 2012 by Erik Lars Myers, Mystery Brewing was once a relative newcomer to the state’s growing craft beer scene. At the time of its launch it was the 48th brewery in North Carolina, now a craft beer-rich environment that’s home to more than 250 breweries.

Mystery, Mystery Brewing Closes Its Doors In North Carolina

Erik Lars Myers

Myers, who in addition to wearing all the top hats at Mystery (Head Brewer & CEO) was also the president of the North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild for a time and authored North Carolina Craft Beer & Breweries which was released in 2012.

Mystery Brewing truly embraced its name “mystery” and forged a unique path and at time when IPA’s ruled in the world of craft beer, the brewery’s interests remained elsewhere. They preferred to brew award-winning Belgians and explore less obvious directions like dark English ales.

Mystery was both a brewpub and a production facility. And for the majority its run the brewery followed a seasonal-only model, but finally introduced a two year-rounds The Golden Hind, an American Pale Ale and The Orbiter, a Belgian White Ale, last January.

And as Myers explained to the News & Observer in the end it was difficulties at the production and distribution arm of the business that led to his decision to close Mystery Brewing…

“We’ve had a hard time getting all the ends to meet…The pub and restaurant are doing really, really well, but there’s a deficit in distribution. It just doesn’t make sense to keep kicking the can down the road.”

This final goodbye from Mystery Brewing was posted on their homepage…

Today, we’re sharing sad news. After almost seven years, Mystery Brewing Company will be closing its doors at the end of the day on October 31st.

This has been an incredibly difficult decision. We’ve always been under-capitalized, and it’s been a struggle to operate for some time now. We’ve suffered a string of pretty bad luck over the past couple of years: equipment failures, construction and permitting delays, storm-related outages and losses. The end result is that we can no longer afford to operate.

Over the course of the next week, we’ll be doing the best we can to celebrate everything we love about Mystery to give it a fond farewell, releasing some favorite old beers that we’ve had kicking around in the back of the cooler, and trying to say goodbye the best way we can. If you get a chance, please come and visit us, say hi, and enjoy a pint, a meal, or a night of music for the last time. The Wiley Fosters – our amazing house band – will be playing our last show at the pub on the evening of October 27th.

We’re enormously proud of the community that has grown up around Mystery, and we’ll miss being here every day for Hillsborough.

With one last raised glass,

Erik Lars Myers, Founder, Brewer, CEO, Mystery Brewing Company

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