Local Beer

Although it’s been in Halethorpe for over fifteen years, we just got around to visiting the Heavy Seas brewery this weekend. Heavy Seas is the rebranded Clipper City Brewing Company which is the largest brewer in the region and it’s just over the border from HoCo.

I wouldn’t say that it is easy to find. The brewery is housed in a nondescript warehouse tucked back in an older industrial park on the far side of the train tracks.

It’s worth searching out though. As Tom Coale wrote in HoCo Rising two years ago, the five dollar tour and sampling is “a great deal.”

It’s fun too. The tour begins in the tasting room and guests are encouraged to bring their beer along on the tour of the warehouse and brewery. Kelly, our tour guide, was animated and enthusiastic about the brewery, beer, and Baltimore.

Heavy Seas beer is heavily rooted in Baltimore too. Hugh Sisson, the Managing Partner, opened Sisson’s, the first brew pub in Maryland since prohibition, in 1989 next to Cross Street Market. He left the restaurant business to concentrate full time on making beer in 1995 when he opened the brewery in Halethorpe. They now produce about 20,000 barrels of beer each year which is sold in 20 states. Heavy Seas beers have won numerous awards in national and international competitions.