The story behind Against the Grain's closure

Against the Grain wound down its operations at Louisville Slugger Field in late December.

This week on the Access Louisville podcast, we chat with Sam Cruz, one of the founders of the brewery, about the closure and what's next for the Louisville beer brand.The company had been at Louisville Slugger Field for 14 years. It announced the closure in a Facebook post recently, saying its lease at the ballpark is expiring and it has opted not to renew. The restaurant’s last day was Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Losing the space is like letting go of a "living memory," Cruz tells us on the show. But he's not sad about it.

"Its hard to be sad about evolution," he said. "Life changes. Our company and us as people we've grown and evolved and the restaurant has kinda run its course. It's time to look beyond that. I felt really comfortable ... being able to land the plane as oppose to holding on and potentially crashing at some point." 

In recent years, Cruz and business partner Jerry Gnagy bought out two previous partners in Against the Grain, and those two partners had been handling the restaurant side of the business, Cruz said. The brewery has had a production facility in Portland for about a decade now. 

With the previous partners out and the alcohol industry as a whole in decline, Against the Grain has been working on a pivot toward production. In particular, they've been working on diversifying their abilities as a production company for different beverages. 

"We could do soda or we could do a packaged water. We're going to get into coffees and products like that. So the future for us is over the next year at the very least is building on that portfolio of contract clients that we have," he tells us.

You can hear the full interview during the episode.  

Against the Grain closed its Highlands Public House in August 2024, citing a challenging lease renewal and shifting neighborhood economics. 

In 2022, it shuttered the Sandwich Emporium Downtown and parted with The Whirling Tiger music venue in Butchertown, later sold to new operators. Earlier this year we reported the company launched a new line of THC beverages called ZAZA. The brand is available in Kentucky and Southern Indiana, and regionally in the Chicago-area.

Against the Grain is the second-largest brewer of beer in Metro Louisville with 5,000 barrels produced locally last year. 

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. You can follow it on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, which are linked above. You can also listen in the player above.