[Baltimore Sun] Suspended Brewing’s new taproom will be an eco-friendly space in Hampden
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After seven years in Pigtown, and a hiatus this year, Suspended Brewing Co. is making moves to open a new taproom and production facility in Hampden in 2025.
The new brewery space at 3851 Falls Road will be “an opportunity to reinvent ourselves,” said co-founder Josey Schwartz.
“It’s more than just an address change,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to do the things we couldn’t do at the old place because we didn’t own it.”
Besides brewing good beer, Schwartz’s ambition for the new Suspended space is to create a net-zero taproom, meaning the brewery will produce as much or more energy than it consumes.
He and co-founders Yasmin Karimian and Amir Karimian plan to outfit the 144-year-old Falls Road building, most recently a salon called Tricho Studio, with sustainable touches such as solar panels, insulated floors, high-performance glass windows and permeable pavers in an outdoor courtyard.
The Hampden brewery will be smaller than Suspended’s Pigtown space, which opened Dec. 31, 2016, and shut its doors exactly seven years later, after a New Year’s Eve party on the last day of 2023. The Washington Boulevard building will soon become home to Mystique Barrel Brewing and Lager House, a new craft beer spot opening this month, according to its website.
On Falls Road, Suspended Brewing will have two stories with room for about 70 customers, as well as a courtyard with string lights and picnic tables. The upstairs taproom will be available for private events: Renting out space, Schwartz said, “is what kept us alive” in Pigtown.
In a note to customers at the end of 2023, he and co-founders said the brewery “barely made it through the pandemic” and has “struggled to find steady footing ever since.”
“Having such a large taproom has presented its own challenges,” they wrote.
They won’t just be downsizing the floor plan in the move to Hampden. The new taproom will also have fewer beers on tap. While the Pigtown spot had 15 to 20 brews on the menu at all times, the Hampden one will have just four core beers: A slow-pour lager, an American IPA, a saison and a dark beer such as a porter or a schwarzbier.
Suspended will also serve some seasonal offerings and occasional “wild beers,” brewed with a different strain of yeast that often yields a sour taste.
Suspended’s owners had mulled a move since 2020, Schwartz said, and previously considered relocating the brewery to 629 W. 36th St., also in Hampden, but backed out of those plans after encountering pushback from neighbors concerned about traffic congestion and parking.
Though he said the “quiet little brewery” would not draw the same traffic as larger taprooms with extensive draft lists and TVs streaming sports, Schwartz said he and co-owners sympathized with the opposition of “a highly concerned few” and decided to find another place instead.
They bought the Falls Road building at auction last year for just under $250,000, according to state property records.
The brewery will join a growing stretch that’s already home to the restaurant Wicked Sisters, coffee shop Good Neighbor and vintage store Wishbone Reserve. Papi’s Tacos opened across the street in 2019.
Good Neighbor owner Shawn Chopra said he hopes to plan collaborations with Suspended Brewing once the taproom opens.
“Josey and Yasmin were great stewards of their last place, and I’m glad to have them in Hampden near us,” Chopra said. “We’re super excited to see new life in that area and into those buildings. We feel the potential of that block.”
Suspended’s owners hope to open the brewery by next summer. But Schwartz, who also took a job with the Maryland Department of the Environment’s climate change team after Suspended closed in Pigtown, said he’d rather perfect an eco-friendly taproom than meet a particular timeline.
The building, he said, “is in disrepair, but if we take our time we can get it ready to serve people for the next 150 years.”
“I’m more concerned with getting it right,” Schwartz said.
Have a question about this article? Contact editor Riley Gutiérrez McDermid at rmcdermid@baltsun.com.
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