After 40 years and more than 10 million pints served, Berkeley’s Triple Rock Brewery and Ale House — America’s oldest continuously operating brewpub — is set to close.
Opened in 1986 by brothers John and Reid Martin, Triple Rock has long been a cornerstone of both the Berkeley community and the craft beer movement. It’s where the great beer minds behind beloved and bygone breweries like 21st Amendment, Steelhead Brewing Co. and Marin Brewing all cut their teeth, but also where generations of Berkeley students got their first round of beers, and maybe even their second round of beers, too.
“It’s definitely something we’ve been super proud of building and running this thing all these years, but we don’t have to do it forever,” John Martin told SFGATE on Wednesday. “And we don’t have anyone to take it over. Our kids are all doing other stuff.”
Now considered founding fathers of America’s brewpub movement, John and Reid Martin were only in their mid- to late 20s when they first opened Triple Rock in the ’80s — meaning the pair are now in their mid- to late 60s. That, combined with what Martin describes as “probably the biggest slump in alcohol sales for bars and restaurants that we’ve seen in 40 years,” was enough for the pair to finally call it quits…