Forty years. Ten million pints. And now the tap is going dry.
The New York Post reports that Triple Rock Brewery & Alehouse, the little brick room at 1920 Shattuck Avenue that helped invent the American brewpub, will close in December. The brothers who built it are tired. Their kids want no part of the grind. And alcohol sales, John Martin told reporters, are in “probably the biggest slump” he has seen in four decades.
That is not a slogan. That is a funeral notice for a kind of American shop that used to be ordinary.
Two Brothers, Seven Variances, One Idea
John and Reid Martin were 25 and 28 when they decided downtown Berkeley needed more beer. They started brewing late in 1985 and opened March 14, 1986. City hall had never heard of a brewpub. Neighbors feared a “factory.” The city made them hunt down seven zoning variances before a single pint could legally leave the tank. Officials wanted them dumped in the industrial district. They stayed on Shattuck anyway.
They first called it Roaring Rock. Rolling Rock’s lawyers objected. Rejected replacements included “Foamy Rock” and “Rolling Duck.” Triple Rock stuck. The tanks ran dry on the first St. Patrick’s Day. Thirty people were already waiting at the door on opening night.
The place claims the fifth brewpub in America and the oldest still run by its original founders. Generations of Cal students learned what a house pale ale tasted like there. Brewers who later launched 21st Amendment, Steelhead, and Marin Brewing cut their teeth on that seven-barrel system. Red Rock, Black Rock, Pinnacle Pale, and the Thursday-only Monkey Head became campus folklore. For ten minutes every afternoon at 5:10, a bell rang and a half-pint cost a dime — if you actually had a dime.
“It’s definitely something we’ve been super proud of building and running this thing all these years, but we don’t have to do it forever,” John Martin told SFGATE. “And we don’t have anyone to take it over. Our kids are all doing other stuff.”
He and Reid are now in their mid-to-late sixties. They used to talk about a fifty-year run. At fifty, John said, he would be 75 and Reid pushing 80. “Running it into that age, I could use the rest.”
The Slump Is Real
Retirement is honest. So is the market. The Brewers Association says craft volume fell about 4 percent in the first half of 2026 after another down year in 2025. Operating brewery counts keep slipping. Gallup has Americans who drink alcohol at a nearly 90-year low. Wine and spirits are taking the same beating. Young customers stay home, swallow a $15 cocktail once and never come back, or skip the category altogether.
Berkeley already lost the Trumer taproom this spring after Firestone Walker bought the brand and hauled production to Paso Robles. Triple Rock is not a chain casualty. It is a family shop that outlasted fads, a name fight, a pandemic, and a city that never made small business easy. Then the customers thinned out.
The Martins own the building. It goes up for sale or lease when the last keg kicks. Long-term staff are expected to land at the family’s other spots — Drake’s, Bear Republic, Jupiter, and the Drake’s taprooms around the East Bay. That is more dignity than most closing restaurants offer.
Until mid-December they will keep regular hours, drag old recipes back onto the board, run a few 1986-price nights, and treat the farewell like a reunion instead of a wake. There is even a memory wall on the brewery site for the stories.
“Hopefully we go out on a great note, see a lot of old customers and friends and enjoy it,” Martin said. “Being part of the fabric of downtown, it is a loss for sure.”
A Season Ends
A brewpub is not a church. It is a table, a paycheck, and a craft. Scripture still has a word for honest labor and the ordinary gifts that come with it. “And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.”
Two young men fought City Hall for the right to make beer on a downtown block. They did it for forty years. They poured ten million pints. Then the culture stopped buying what they made, and nobody in the family wanted the keys.
That is not a culture in bloom. That is a culture that talks endlessly about community while watching the rooms that actually held one lock the door.
If you ever sat under those taps, go once more before Christmas. Bring a dime at 5:10 if they still ring the bell. Then watch what replaces it on Shattuck. Whatever lands there will not have taken seven variances and four decades to earn the right to stay.
