When Jim Crute opened Lightning Brewery in an industrial-zoned business suite in Poway, it was the inland North County municipality’s lone beermaking facility. That was 2006. Fast-forward two decades and nothing has changed. Despite AleSmith Brewing and Karl Strauss Brewing having non-brewing locations down the street from Crute’s business, and Little Miss Brewing having operated a satellite tasting room on Scripps Poway Parkway from 2022 to 2025, Lightning is the only site within city limits where beer has ever been brewed.
Even though there were only around 10 other competing brewing companies in all of San Diego County when Crute chose where to lay down stakes, Poway’s “craft-beer desert” status was still a big part of its appeal. Being the only game in town allowed Crute to largely do things his way, forming long-lasting relationships with his clientele along the way. He says “being around nice folks that also enjoy really great beer” is what he will miss most, but the scientist-turned-brewer says he will permanently close the doors to his business following taproom service on Friday, January 30.
“The COVID pandemic was a game-changer that accelerated an alteration of the marketplace,” says Crute, when asked what prompted his decision. “There are more options, in general: a much larger number of little breweries, the introduction of pre-packaged craft cocktails, wider spread availability of kombucha-based hard beverages, the introduction of actually-OK-tasting non-alcoholic beers, an aging population where older folks more closely watch their alcohol consumption and a younger population that is not as attracted to beer or other alcoholic beverages.”
Operating under the tagline “better beer through science”, Crute’s outlier status extended beyond geography to the styles of beer in Lightning’s portfolio. While most local breweries were locked in an all-out war to craft the boldest, most blatantly bitter West Coast IPA, Crute initially vowed not to produce that style at all (he later relented), instead crafting Old World styles hailing from the U.K., Belgium and Germany. Far ahead of lager’s modern-day renaissance, he was brewing multiple lagers, regardless of the fact there was not yet much of a market for them…