A couple of weeks ago I got a text from Spike, my former business partner and co-founder of Terrapin Beer Company.
“The party is over my friend. They are shutting Terrapin down at the end of September.”
He did not have all the details yet. He was in Costa Rica at the time, taking training in Qigong. (That fact got me thinking about a book Spike recommended several months back that I have been meaning to write about. Strength to Strength. More on that in a future article.)
For those who do not know the Terrapin origin story, here is the short version.
Spike and I were both working at a local Atlanta brewery in 1998 when the Brewers Association brought the Craft Brewers Conference to Atlanta. For Georgia in particular this was a significant moment. Georgia was still a beer desert in those days. High gravity beers over six percent ABV were illegal. Breweries could not sell directly to consumers on site. Sunday sales were banned. Bringing two thousand brewers and industry people into the middle of all that was a deliberate statement. The Brewers Association wanted to put the economic power of craft beer directly in front of lawmakers who had been blocking it for decades.
A few days before the conference started, our manager took the brewing staff to a Braves game for a team building event. Not just any game. It was Opening Day, March 31, 1998, at Turner Field. The Milwaukee Brewers had just moved to the National League that season due to realignment, which is why seeing them in Atlanta was notable enough to warrant a field trip for a group of professional brewers. And come on, it was the Brewers; the irony was not lost on us.
The next morning the owner lost his mind about it. He believed with the Craft Brewers Conference fast approaching, our time would have been better spent cleaning and prepping the brewery to show off to the world. And then, to make his point, he had us outside all day with buckets of blacktop sealer. Repaving the parking lot. With paint rollers. By hand.
That was the day Spike and I decided we were going to open our own brewery.
We came up with the name Terrapin that same week, just a couple of days before the conference began. We named it after the Grateful Dead song Terrapin Station. Spike had spent several summers in his younger days following the band. We even invented a little turtle hand gesture that we used whenever we passed each other in the halls of the conference. That was the birth of Terrapin Beer. Born in spite, named after a song, launched four years later on a personal credit card.
Fast forward to today. Terrapin Beer is owned by Tilray Brands, a cannabis company originally out of British Columbia. Tilray expanded aggressively into craft beer starting in 2020 with the purchase of Sweetwater Brewing in Atlanta, then kept going. Green Flash and Alpine in 2021. Montauk in 2022. Eight brands from Anheuser-Busch in 2023 including Shock Top, Breckenridge, Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Redhook, and Widmer Brothers. Four from Molson Coors in 2024 including Terrapin, Hop Valley, Revolver, and Atwater. Then Brewdog in 2026, making Tilray the fourth largest craft brewing company in the country behind Yuengling, Sierra Nevada, and Boston Beer.
That is a lot of breweries. Even so, all those breweries only account for 29% of Tilray’s overall business. Which is exactly why what happened next makes sense from an overall business perspective. (Get ready for the corporate buzzwords!) Tilray began implementing Project 420, “a business optimization plan designed to consolidate production, streamline operations, and improve the Company’s cost structure. Activities implemented under the plan included the closure and consolidation of certain brewery and related facilities, including Redhook, Terrapin, Atwater, Hop Valley, and Revolver.”
After making some calls and talking to a few people, here is what I learned. The Terrapin brand is not going away. Tilray plans to open a Terrapin taproom in downtown Athens, which makes sense considering the current facility sits in an industrial area a couple of miles from downtown. Production will shift to other Tilray breweries, most likely Sweetwater. The production brewery itself closes at the end of September. Supposedly, the warehouse in Athens will remain and serve as a storage and shipping hub for several Tilray brands.
Tilray may know its numbers. But here is what Tilray does not know. Here is why this “smart” business move hits differently, at least for me.
The Cochran kids grew up in that building. When my daughter was born, Irina worked full time at the brewery and had a crib set up in her office. Before Terrapin expanded and needed more office space, we kept a private room upstairs where the kids would hang out while we were working or were there on weekends for tours and events. We spent the night there often. The kids had a TV and VCR combo set up in what would later become the QA/QC lab, and all our Disney movies were stacked in the corner. Toys everywhere.
More than once a parent on the Terrapin tour would come to the bar asking if anyone had seen their kid. Our first instinct was always to check upstairs and see if they had wandered up to play with ours. The Cochran kids were into geocaching then, so we set one up at the brewery which they would keep stocked. My oldest son’s first job in high school was working at Terrapin. Addison worked in the back doing odd jobs like cleaning and painting kegs. He purposely did not tell the others that he was related to the owners; he wanted to be treated like one of the crew.
Spike lived in the brewery full time when we first opened. He would find himself walking into the brewery in the middle of the night just to check on things. Always on duty, 24 hours a day.
We both met some of the most important people in our lives in that building. People met their spouses there. We hosted multiple weddings, several family reunions, and more charitable events for the local community than I can recall. Several of our friends now, two decades later, started as employees or even part time tour volunteers. We met and enjoyed spending time with many local and touring musicians. After one big event, the McCoury Brothers and the rest of the Del McCoury Band ended up at our bar after hours. That was a pretty good night.
The brewery was Terrapin’s best marketing tool. It was our policy that we would not consider a new distribution market unless the decision makers at the distributor made the trip to Athens to see us first. Seeing Terrapin meant seeing us. The brewery defined the brand in a way that no logo or label ever could.
And now it is closing.
When Terrapin took a minority investment from Molson Coors back in 2011, everyone said big beer was going to kill craft. The pitchforks came out. We sold out, they said.
In hindsight Molson Coors treated Terrapin, and its employees with respect. Yes, they shifted some production of Hopsecutioner, Terrapin’s flagship IPA. But they kept the Athens brewery open. Expanded it even. They spent money in the local community and hired more people. I have to assume it was similar for the other breweries in their portfolio. As brewers themselves, Molson Coors understood what it meant to have built something in a specific place with specific people.
Tilray is running a different kind of math. They are not wrong. The numbers make sense. Eighteen brewing facilities is too many and consolidation is the rational move for Tilray overall. But does it make sense for Terrapin individually? Only time will tell.
All I know is it stings on a personal level when the facility being consolidated is the one where your daughter took her first steps.
The brand will continue. But the brewery where it all started, where Spike had a full apartment, where our kids had a playroom and spent half their childhood, where strangers became friends at the bar, that brewery closes at the end of September. And it will not reopen.
On September 25, the official last day of production, Irina and I are going to drive up to Athens and have one last beer there. Who am I kidding? We’ll have several. Spike will be there for that. And hopefully many of the Terrapin crew from the last 24 years. We are treating it as one last Terrapin family reunion at the place where it all began. If any Terrapin fans want to join us for one last pint, come find us. Friday, September 25. 3-9pm. 265 Newton Bridge Rd. See you there!
Not financial advice. Personal experience you can use.
Hi John! So good to hear from you, thanks to a friend who shared this post. Roger and I were there at that 2002 Brewfest when Terrapin was introduced, and we have been fans ever since. One of our first tours was led by Spike, and we always enjoyed seeing you, Irena, and the kids at the brewery. We have been following the news, so we knew about shutting down production, but thought the taproom would remain open, at least for the immediate future. It will be a huge loss to the Athens community. We will be there on the 25th! ❤️🍻