Location: San Diego, California.
Our favorites: Sculpin IPA, Grunion Pale Ale, Victory at Sea.
What other craft brewery has had such a brutal roller coaster decade as Ballast Point? They entered it as one of San Diego’s favorite IPA makers, with their flagship Sculpin IPA, one of the most popular examples of the style, and a whole host of other respected brews like the Victory at Sea imperial porter. The brewery’s fame grew exponentially after the release of Grapefruit Sculpin in 2014, which was the impetus for a brief frenzy for fruity IPAs, some characteristics of which have been passed on over time to modern juicy and cloudy IPAs.
It’s easy today to look back at the past and mock this moment in craft brewing history, but Grapefruit Sculpin was a catalyst, a very important event that happened just as the first NEIPAs were beginning to appear. That beer may not have held its own in craft circles, but the ideas behind it were ahead of their time and foreshadowed many of the traits of modern IPAs – for good or bad.
We openly admit it: when we first tried Grapefruit Sculpin in 2014, we loved it as much as anyone. Of course, it wasn’t always sunny. Constellation Brands’ purchase of Ballast Point in 2015 for a whopping one billion dollars will absolutely go down in history as the most overvalued deal in the craft boom era – an example of a company that invested a lot of money, confident that growth wouldn’t stop for the foreseeable future. It’s only been four years, and it seems like the signs of the industry’s slowdown were already evident then, but as we all know, we’re all strong in hindsight.
In the years that followed, many Ballast Point taprooms closed and the company became less and less important, although it did release more and more Sculpin variants. Ballast Point has undoubtedly fallen on hard times, but it would be wrong not to recognize its importance on the scale of the decade – after all, its influence is still tangible.
