A Good Hop Goodbye and the Challenges of Craft Beer Bars

Tomorrow Melissa Myers of The Good Hop will host a final blowout party starting at 2:00 pm at her beloved craft beer bar and store in Oakland’s north of Uptown KONO district. It’s going to be a bitter-sweet day and evening as she says goodbye to regulars and well-wishers, but the good news is that the little beer bar has been purchased by a loyal and discerning Good Hop regular and a popular former Good Hop bartender who has poured beers everywhere from Ghost Town to Toronado, making this end to Melissa’s publican era perhaps as happy as a closing day can be. 

On Monday, September 9, The Good Hop sent out this reminder: 

Hey fam, @maltymaven brought in her last batch of kickass beers for The Good Hop so an era has officially come to an end. Next batch will be all @adammclark making the decisions on what beers you’ll be drinking next so if you love Melissa’s curations, don’t sleep on these! Fresh-hop beers, festbiers, and pumpkin beers OH MY! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Our shelves will be movin and shakin this month so get down here. Or you can claim your beers online to make sure you lock ‘em in at www.thegoodhop.com

Melissa is a Bay Area beer community stalwart who first became known as a brewer in the Bay Area after brewing professionally in Philadelphia and Denver. She moved west to the epicenter of the craft revolution in the nineties and brewed at Magnolia in SF, Pyramid in Berkeley, the Ross Valley brewery in Marin and at Drake’s in the East Bay. She’s also been involved in the beer community as a competition beer judge over the years. 

In July 2014, she and her social media savvy wife, Kathryn, opened a craft beer store and bar, in part because opening a brewery and taproom was cost prohibitive and the number of local California breweries had jumped up dramatically by then. 

By the way, you’ll enjoy the charming Indiegogo video from that point in time, it’s sweetly nostalgic and audacious all at the same time:

The Good Hop opened at Telegraph and 24th Street in Oakland, providing coolers of select beers as well as a place to chat, drink fresh draft beer and, of course, read phones or watch sports as one does in this modern world. It also has provided a gathering place for women and  LGBTQ people who like craft beer to meet up or just drop in for a supportive experience, something which is still not as ubiquitous as one might expect. Over a ten year run, The Good Hop built a loyal community, somehow survived the pandemic, and has found a way forward to the next generation of stewardship.   

Last week The Cooler in San Leandro drained its taps, closed its cooler doors and folded the business itself. The craft beer multi-tap had brought a carefully curated variety of craft beers to the people of the East Bay. Following the pandemic shutdowns and the death of beloved co-owner and bartender Jeff Botz, owners Arne Johnson and Eric Keyes made an attempt to sell the business, but no buyer emerged as sales lagged. The friends and customers who stopped by on Saturday afternoon were greeted with a dwindling choice of wines, sour beers or a few ciders as the beer-flavored and hop-centric beers were already gone, a day before the planned closing. “It’s actually okay that we won’t have a final beer,” said one regular customer. “We knew the wines on draft here were good but we always passed them up for the beers, so here we are enjoying something new on the last day.” Though nostalgic conversations flowed, the pain of the end of an era persisted just under the surface, knowing the end was near.

We kept hearing anecdotes that specialty craft beer bars unaffiliated with breweries have been struggling around the country, during a period that began just before the pandemic disruption. Out of state, we followed the demise of Falling Rock in Denver and hear that Apex in Portland will close soon, for example. Everyone seems to have an opinion about the closings. Some note that people are just drinking less now. Beer sales (and that of alcohol in general) are down overall from the big industrial players to the smallest local brands. 

Some attribute the pressure on craft beer bars to the popular small brewery strategy of opening additional taprooms so breweries can sell more beer direct to consumers instead of distributing kegs to multi-tap bars at a wholesale price, thus bringing in less per keg. Fieldwork’s San Leandro taproom is family friendly due to different licensing restrictions for taprooms, has a kitchen and opened less than a block from the site of The Cooler. Oakland overall has seen a bloom of new brewery taprooms such as Brix Factory — though none are easy walking distance from The Good Hop.

There’s also pressure from the success of local craft beers in the overall marketplace. These days you may find just enough style and brand choice at your own best quality neighborhood bar that you are less likely to go to a special destination to enjoy a pint out. Oh, but the choices and surprises a great craft beer bar can provide!

So why not take the opportunity to raise a glass to Melissa, Kathryn and the whole Good Hop crew this weekend, whether you stop by there or not. Maybe send along some good thoughts to the people who ran and loved the Cooler, too. 

The very good news is that The Good Hop will reopen soon and have another life thanks to Monica and Adam, and that others continue to believe in the multitap craft beer bar concept, too. Near Powell and Market in SF, Drew and Jen Hall recently reopened the space that had been Mikkeller Bar through 2022, determined to have another go at providing serious craft taps near Union Square and not far from the Warfield Theater and other venues. Hope lives on for special adult beverage sanctuaries in the urban landscape, purpose built to bring people a curated selection of excellent craft beers from many breweries. There are still places where you can discover new breweries and beers, revisit favorites and snag some cans or bottles to bring home after.

Cheers from Gail and Steve

Explore Beer By BART: Use our acclaimed destination list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places and their related transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Bonus: we are appreciating beer writer Jay Brooks for this 2014 post we used to fact-check some of the details and to rediscover the Indiegogo promo film. Check it out:: https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/good-hop-grand-opening-saturday/