Santee-based Twisted Manzanita Ales & Spirits is closing down its tasting room in Pacific Beach. Located at 4652 Mission Boulevard, the 1,400-square-foot satellite, non-brewing facility was opened in 2014 as a coastal yang to the yin that is the company’s easterly inland headquarters. This is the third brewery-owned venue closure in the past 30 days, following URBN Restaurant Group shutting down the brewing component of its El Cajon brewpub and Stone Brewing Co. deciding to pull the plug on Stone Farms. But there’s more to this closure than the others, says employees and former staff at Twisted Manzanita.

According to several internal sources, Twisted Manzanita’s ownership informed employees of the Pacific Beach tasting room that they were closing it temporarily in order to remodel the venue. While they were away, the draft system was disassembled. (The photos here show the state of things when an employee arrived unannounced last Sunday evening.)

According to Twisted Manzanita employees and witnesses at a neighboring business, last Monday night ownership ordered staff from Santee to come to PB to clear out the tasting room. Items were loaded into a truck and trailer and hauled away. An internal email later confirmed the business was not being remodeled but, in fact, being closed.

Twisted Manzanita is in the process of working with a group of separate investors to try to open an Oggi’s-style ale house in North Park, but there is no guarantee that, if that comes to fruition, the company’s PB employees will be offered jobs at that location.

The information in this article was offered and corroborated by multiple Twisted Manzanita employees who wished to share this information anonymously. A number of them stated that, as of press-time, the PB tasting room employees still had no idea their workplace was being closed down, making this a particularly bitter bit of news to deliver. (Editor’s Note: Outside of the employees interviewed for this article, Twisted Manzanita Ales could not be reached for comment.)