Brewery Closures
A Brewery Is Closing.
Here's What Happens to the Equipment.
Whether it is your brewery, your tenant's, or your borrower's — the stainless in that building is worth real money, and what you do in the first two weeks decides how much of it you keep.
40+
Brewery closures per year
100%
Rigging & removal handled
50
States served
Four ways this ends
Every brewery closure resolves one of four ways. They are not equally good, and the difference between the best and worst outcome on the same equipment is routinely tens of thousands of dollars.
Buyout
Best when you need speed or certainty
We look at the list, look at the building, and write one check for the whole package. You are done. It is the lowest-friction path and it prices in our risk and our freight, so it will not be the highest gross number you could theoretically get — it is just the one you can actually count on.
Liquidation / consignment
Best when you have weeks, not days
Pieces are listed and sold individually to end users over a period of weeks. Gross proceeds are typically higher than a buyout because each buyer is paying retail for the one thing they needed. You take the proceeds less our fee, and you wait longer for the money.
Auction
Best when a date is being forced on you
An auction clears the building on a fixed date, which is genuinely useful when a court or a landlord is driving. The trade-off is price control. Brewery equipment is specialized enough that auction results swing hard on who happens to be in the room.
Walking away
The expensive one
Equipment left behind becomes the landlord’s problem and the landlord’s asset, and you may still be billed for removal and restoration. This is the most common ending and almost always the worst one financially. If you are close to this point, a phone call still costs you nothing.
Do these in this order
Most of the money lost in a brewery closure is lost to sequence, not to price. People sell equipment before they know who is owed it, or they surrender the building before the tanks are out.
- 1
Find out who actually owns the equipment.
Check your loan documents and run a UCC search. If a lender has a blanket lien on business assets, that includes the tanks. Selling out from under a lien creates a much bigger problem than the one you are solving.
- 2
Read the lease before you tell the landlord anything.
Look for restoration clauses, fixture language, and what happens to equipment left after the term. Some leases claim anything bolted down. Knowing this changes who you negotiate with and how.
- 3
Get a real inventory with photos.
Make and model, size, serial where visible, and photographs of nameplates. This is the single thing that most determines how fast and how accurately anyone can quote you. A list without photos gets a low, cautious number.
- 4
Decide buyout versus liquidation before you list anything.
Selling a couple of pieces yourself first and then asking a dealer to take "the rest" is the most common way to destroy the value of a package. The fermenters are what makes the brewhouse sellable.
- 5
Keep utilities on until the equipment is out.
Rigging a glycol system and a steam plant with the power already cut is slower, more dangerous, and more expensive. Shutting off the building early to save a few hundred dollars regularly costs thousands.
- 6
Handle the licenses separately.
TTB and your state authority have their own closure requirements and timelines. They do not affect the equipment sale, but they do have deadlines that are easy to miss in the middle of everything else.
What actually holds value
Sells well
- • Fermenters and brite tanks in common sizes. Jacketed stainless is the most liquid thing in the building.
- • Complete brewhouses sold as a system with the controls and platform.
- • Glycol chillers sized 5 HP and up, especially packaged units.
- • Canning and bottling lines from known builders, with the change parts.
- • Kegs in volume, with clean ownership documentation.
- • Centrifuges, pumps and lab equipment — small, easy to ship, always in demand.
Harder to move
- • Custom fabrication built for one room and one process.
- • Proprietary control systems nobody else can service or reprogram.
- • Very small brewpub systems — there are more of them than there are buyers.
- • Bar, kitchen and taproom fixtures, which belong in a different sale entirely.
- • Anything with an unknown pressure-vessel history.
Equipment is pulled from the facility in working condition unless a listing notes otherwise, and we tell buyers what we know. That honesty is also why a well-documented package from a clean shutdown brings more than the same gear from a building that was abandoned.
Not every call comes from the brewery owner
Owners
You built it. You want it handled quickly, quietly, and for as much as it is worth.
Landlords
A tenant left. You have a building full of stainless and no idea what it is. We do.
Banks & lenders
Collateral recovery with documented appraisals and a clean, arms-length transaction.
Receivers & trustees
Court-driven timelines, documented process, proceeds directed where they are supposed to go.
Brewery closures by state
We buy and liquidate nationwide from our base in Indianapolis. Freight and rigging look different depending on where you are, so here is what to expect in the states we work most.
Not listed? We still buy there — call (317) 300-6234 and we will quote the freight honestly.
Common questions
What happens to the equipment when a brewery closes?
It goes one of four ways: a buyout where a dealer writes one check for everything, a consignment liquidation where pieces are sold individually over weeks and you take the proceeds less a fee, an auction, or an abandonment where the landlord ends up with it. The first two almost always return more money than the last two.
How much is used brewery equipment worth?
Far less than replacement cost and far more than scrap. Stainless holds value best — fermenters, brites and brewhouses. Glycol chillers and packaging equipment hold value well when they are sized for common production volumes. Small brewpub-scale gear, custom fabrication and anything with a proprietary control system is harder to move. The honest answer for any specific brewery requires a list and photos.
Should I auction the equipment instead?
Sometimes. An auction sets a date and clears the room, which matters when a landlord or a court is driving the timeline. What you give up is price control — auction results on brewery equipment vary enormously depending on who shows up that day. If you have weeks rather than days, a liquidation generally returns more.
Who gets the money if there is a lender or a landlord involved?
That depends on your lease, your loan documents, and whether anyone has filed a UCC lien on the equipment. Sort that out before you sell anything. We work with owners, landlords, banks and receivers, and we are used to deals where the proceeds are directed somewhere other than the brewery owner.
How fast can a brewery be cleared out?
A straightforward buyout can move quickly once we have seen the list and the building. The variables are rigging access, whether the glycol and steam are still live, and whether the landlord is giving you a hard date. We respond quickly and will tell you up front what the realistic timeline looks like.
Do I have to still be operating to sell the equipment?
No. We buy from breweries that closed months ago, from landlords who inherited equipment with a building, and from banks and receivers holding collateral. Equipment that has been sitting is still worth money, though a cold, drained, un-CIPed tank is worth less than one that was shut down properly.
Tell us what you have
A list and a few photos is enough to start. No obligation, fully confidential, and we'll get back to you quickly.
Rigging, loading and freight handled nationwide.