Phil Farrell, brewmaster at Georgia’s StillFire Brewing, shrugs off an unsubtle question about the wisdom of opening a big new brewery right now. Of course, StillFire’s owners struggled with whether and how to proceed with longstanding plans to open a second, larger brewery and taproom in Smyrna, GA. But they went all-in anyhow. “Craft beer may be in a skid,” he says, “but you need to steer into a skid to stay out of the ditch.”
Farrell would know. StillFire opened its original Suwanee, GA location in October 2019 — almost 5 months to the day before the start of pandemic lockdowns. “COVID-19 rules caused our taproom to shut down, so risk adversity became part of the company DNA,” he says.
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