After nearly nine years in business, the River Watch Brewery on Fourth Street is closing as of April 19.
In 2020, the Georgia legislature’s budget called for cuts to the Department of Agriculture, which was to have led to the closing of the Augusta State Farmers Market though that decision was later reversed. The brewery is located on Farmer’s Market property, and before the reversal, the brewery was told it would have to relocate by June 2021.
“COVID did us no favors,” said owner Brey Sloan, who spent about eight months trying to find places to affordably store the larger pieces of brewing equipment before deciding to sell them, downsize and find another location.
“Instead of having enough beer on hand to distribute to all the restaurants and the bars in the CSRA, we were just going to do a little bit of that… and then focus the rest of it as just a big tap room,” she said.
Moving downtown presented another issue, however, as one of the available buildings there would cost about $1.2 million to renovate to code, at the cheapest.
“Georgia law is another piece of the problem,” Sloan said, noting that she wouldn’t have had an issue crafting the beer at the brewery and selling it at a smaller, satellite location.
MORE: Former Davis chief of staff being sued for concealing public records
However, she notes, “in Georgia you have to go through a distributor, or the beer has to be sold where it’s produced.”
While Sloan said she’d love to move somewhere else — even having considered space in North Augusta — traffic slowing down after the pandemic, and amid confusion with nearby Savannah River Brewing Co., gathering the resources to relocate has been difficult.
Sloan, a retired Army colonel, signed the lease on the current building on Fourth Street in 2015, opening the brewery in April of 2016.
At one point during her 30 years of service, Sloan was stationed in what was then Burma, now Myanmar. Sanctions on the country at the time prevented beer imports, but Sloan, already an experienced homebrewer, was still able to mail herself ingredients to brew her own.
“We became very well known as having the best beer in Rangoon,” she said. “Which, you know, considering the competition was never much of a title, but that’s what gave us the idea.”
After serving four years in Burma, she was then stationed in Japan, and apprenticed at the Bayern Meister Bier Brewery in Fujinomiya. She continued her studies in commercial brewing at the Siebel Institute in Chicago and the Doemens Academy in Munich, Germany.
After retiring from the Army, she and her husband settled in Augusta to start the brewery. Its last day open will be its eighth anniversary, April 19.
Sloan says she’ll miss interacting with customers, and getting to know “really great people” over the years, most of all.
“I never got into this to be America’s next big beer producer or get bought out by anybody or anything,” she said. “This was always just, you know, come down, drink my beer, enjoy your time with your friends and have a good time… That’s always been the biggest benefit of it all.”
The River Watch Brewery (not to be confused with the Savannah River Brewing Co.) is located at 1175 4th St.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
