The ownership history of Ballast Point is one that will continue to shock the beer industry: Constellation Brands, the company that sells Modelo and Corona in the U.S., raised eyebrows when it bought Ballast Point from its original founders for a cool $1 billion in 2015. Tuesday, it raised even more eyebrows by selling the craft beer brand to a small suburban Chicago brewery called Kings & Convicts.

Ballast Point’s Long Beach brewpub, along with four other California brewpubs and a taproom in Chicago, were part of the deal. The new owners say that all employees with be retained and locations will remain open.

The cost of the purchase was not disclosed, but Kings & Convicts co-founder and CEO Brendan Watters, however, told the Chicago Tribune that it was “below $1 billion.” The new ownership group includes “six investors, including two from California and my business partner Christopher Bradley,” Watters said.

Watters also plans on moving his headquarters from Chicago to San Diego.

Perhaps most fascinating for those in the beer world is the irony that a small microbrewery in business for only two years with under 100 accounts purchased Ballast Point from a massive beverage producer like Constellation (usually the opposite happens). Ballast Point is on track to produce 200,000 barrels of beer this year. Last year, Kings & Convicts made less than 600 barrels, or about 1,200 kegs of beer, according to the Brewers Association.

The initial purchase of Ballast Point after more than two decades of independent ownership was met with both sneers and sarcasm by the craft brewing scene. For brewery Modern Times, it meant pulling a joke that smelled like they were selling out, only to have its owner, Jacob McKean, write an eviscerating blog post about what “selling out” really means and eventually becoming an employee-owned company in 2017. For the owners of Long Beach’s Beachwood, it meant mocking Ballast with a beer—quite literally.

Since Constellation purchased Ballast Point in 2015, the brewery has been an albatross for the multi-billion dollar wine, beer and spirits firm. Ballast Point saw a 3.4% drop in sales last year. Constellation wrote off $108 million in “impairment charges” due to Ballast’s lackluster performance in 2018 and $87 million the year before last. Impairment charges are logged when companies write off “goodwill” for brands that are not delivering on their investments. Industry experts say that these write-offs suggested Constellation was aware it overpaid when it shelled out $1 billion for Ballast Point at the height of the craft beer boom.

Ballast Point is located at 110 Marina Drive.



Brian Addison is a columnist and editor for the Long Beach Post. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.