capn_beer_blog

A new Highlandtown brewery will soon be stocking Baltimore liquor store shelves with such potables as Formstone Ale and Amber’s Ale, Hon.

John O’Melia, a former water treatment engineer and consultant, opened Bawlmer Craft Beers LLC in January and is expecting to start distributing two beer varieties this month. He has taken up shop in the old Crown Cork and Seal Building, home to the birth of millions of beer bottlecaps.

The opening comes as the Baltimore brewing industry has seen a downturn in recent years, including the closure of a microbrewery in Westminster. But O’Melia said he thinks he can buck that trend, since while beer sells well in good times, “in bad times then beer does really well.”

O’Melia home-brewed his beer for 15 years while working as a consultant designing water treatment plants and technologies. After thinking about going full-time with the hobby for three years, he finally landed a federal brewing license this year and used $250,000 in private investment to get started. He has been working with a former classmate at Towson’s Loyola Blakefield High School, John Riggle, to get the brand to market.

Bawlmer beers will be distributed on a small scale at first, in city neighborhoods like Canton, Federal Hill and Fells Point, and along the York Road corridor. O’Melia eventually plans to brew a summer variety, Downy Ocean, to be distributed in Ocean City, as well as a third main brew called Crabby Abby, a Belgian-style strong dark ale.

The other two main varieties are an American-style pale ale and an American amber ale.

“We’re really trying to start a small artisinal craft brewery for Baltimore,” O’Melia said. He plans to brew about 160 barrels — more than 50,000 bottles worth — every two to three weeks.

Volker Stewart, co-owner of the Brewer’s Art brewpub in Mount Vernon, said that’s a welcome addition. When his bar was founded in 1996, there were six breweries in Baltimore’s city limits, but now there are two.

“It’s a step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned,” Stewart said.

But that atrophy reflects a challenging environment for brewers. Clay Pipe Brewery of Westminster, known for its Backfin Pale Ale and Hop-Ocalypse IPA, shut down this year. It had its own brewing facilities there, but later closed them and paid Flying Dog Brewery of Frederick to bottle its beer. Owner Gregg Norris said he decided to close the company because it needed a broader expansion into as many as 20 states to be successful, but that wasn’t something he and his family wanted to do.

Hugh Sisson, a general partner with Heavy Seas Beer — which includes the locally known Clipper City varieties — said profit margins for brewers are already thin, but contracting out the bottling narrows them even further. On top of that, distributing on a small scale can make it challenging to be profitable, he said.

But O’Melia is undaunted. He said while other breweries are finding it impossible to land bank loans to expand, he isn’t dependent on credit. And he isn’t worried about being too small — the brewery is going to be small enough, at least at first, to do its own distribution.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people in brewing,” O’Melia said. “I still think beer is a really good business to be in. We could be too small, but I don’t think that’s true."