03 April 2012

Well, it LOOKS like a brewpub......

Photos of ongoing construction in the future Dempsey's in the Camden Yards Warehouse.  Decide for yourselves.


7 comments:

Andrew said...

Sure do wish you'd just come out and express your doubts about whether or not this is a brewpub.

The Oriole Way said...

They have a lot of work to do by Friday!

Alexander D. Mitchell IV said...

Andrew:
1) you can't set up a real brewpub (with grain and all that) that fast;
2) given the probable sky-high real estate prices down there, they probably can't afford the square footage a real brewpub would occupy;
3) this looks like an extract-based, no-boil system, of the kind I have seen at several brewpubs that no longer exist because of poor beer quality;
4) even if this is a real brewing system, I'd be surprised if it could keep up with baseball fans' drinking ability--unless, of course, the Orioles are so bad (again) that you can't give away tickets by mid-season.

JohnM. said...

Actually Alex, your latest article addresses a question that immediately came to mind when I read the Sun article. That article mentions a "full opening" by the end of April, which struck me as highly improbable, assuming "full opening" meant there would on-site brewed beer for sale by then.

Also.... I don't know, I get so tired of having negative thougts/things to say about the O's and their ownership... but everything about the original story just didn't add up to me. There's never been much of a focus on good beer at Camden Yards in the past, so why the sudden epiphany and decision to build a brewpub thre? Frankly, as your previous article seems to imply, this just sounds like another gimick by Oriole ownership, and so I have very little hope about the quality of the beers there, even if they ever are brewed on site.

At the risk of sounding like a complete curmudgeon, I'm expecting mediocre beer at best at Dempsy's, which should be perfectly in keeping with the quality of the play on the field during baseball season. I tend to doubt that any actual beer will be brewed there (I mean, why bother?), and I'll be surprised if this latest venture does very well. There'll likely be some initial interest as folks stop by to check out the "new kid on the block," and then people will go back to buying the usual crap you can buy from various vendors around the stadium.

I hope I'm completely wrong about all this, but...

Alexander D. Mitchell IV said...

I'd love for our cynicism and skepticism to be proven wrong.

But Delaware North hasn't been very forthcoming about information on the place. I was down there in person yesterday, and still got voice mail, "please select from the following directory; if you know your party's extension...", etc.

I will point out that most brewery projects that we have heard about of late--Union Craft Brewing, Raven/Haussner's/Charm City/Peabody Heights, Frisco, DuClaw's pending expansion, Stillwater/Of Love And Regret, etc.--we hear rumors about it for months, wait a year for them to open, see photos of the construction or renovation, etc. Contrast this with another local brewing project where literally nobody else in the industry has even seen the brewing equipment, not even this guy walking all over its purported location......

Insofar as the Orioles, I remember the days in the early 1990s when you could have staged a chicken fight in left field and sold out the stadium. I gave up completely on major league baseball after the second players' strike, and haven't looked back. The last time I was in the stadium, we had four seats together several rows behind home plate for $13 each.

Andrew said...

Thanks for the response. I just want to make clear that I wasn't doubting your skepticism, but rather wishing you'd explain it to someone who wasn't as familiar with the details. I'm heading to Camden Yards from 3,000 miles away on Friday and was wondering how much effort I should make to swing by the place.

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