October 2025 update: City-State’s future is not in doubt and we will correct the record below using italics and strikethroughs. The original title of this piece was City-State Stops Brewing, Future in Doubt. More soon. – Jake
We do not have many details here, but at some point in the spring or summer of 2025 City-State Brewing will close. The brewery stopped ordering grain and hops earlier and has ceased brewing operations, having used up the materials they had on hand. This will provide beer for the time being. In a post on Instagram, the brewery mentioned the possibility of ordering beer from other breweries, but it doesn’t make long-term sense to run a brewery as a bar while paying for all the square footage of a brewhouse.
We suspect the timeline for permanent closure is between Memorial Day and Labor Day. When reached, City-State founder and CEO James Warner understandably declined to comment. We hope to know more soon.
When City-State chooses to announce a closure, the immediate cause will be a rent increase, according to someone with knowledge of the situation. But the beer industry is dealing with two macro headwinds. First, people in their 20s and 30s are drinking less alcohol, including less beer. Second, the lingering effects of the pandemic have taken a toll on beer sales, especially kegged beer sent to bars and restaurants. One brewery owner told DC Beer that the total sales of draft beer in 2023 in DC were two-thirds of what they were in 2019. That’s not for their brewery, that’s overall, the sum total of all draft sales.
Those factors don’t explain everything, of course. City-State opened in June of 2021, during the pandemic. As such, they lacked the name recognition and goodwill of more established local breweries. Early on, much of their beer was inconsistent, though I thought the brewery hit their stride with the hiring of ex-3 Stars alums Greg Schmidt and Meth Gunasinghe. I named their Air & Space West Coast IPA one of my favorite beers of 2023 and it remains one of the better examples of that style in the area. It’s grim that Schmidt and Gunasinghe now have to close another brewery.
Some growing pains were attributable to the brewery’s “20 + 5” brew house, which features a 20-barrel vessel connected to a 5-barrel one that allows for decoction and side hopping. In an October 2025 update, Warner disputed this, telling us that the brewhouse “worked exactly as intended” and “kept us going and kept a variety of beers going while we were dealing with wholesale distribution.” Hopefully another brewery can take advantage of this set up, but as of now the market for brewing equipment is, like the beer market overall, flat. Hellbender’s high efficiency mash filter system and canning line sold at auction for well under market value, for example.
The last few times I visited City-State–on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays–it’s been crowded, but the brewery isn’t built for just on-premise sales; selling cans in grocery stores amid both declining alcohol sales and a proliferation of beer and non-beer options is much harder than it once was. In addition, a unique partnership with DC’s first Black woman-owned brand, in which Urban Garden Brewing would have dedicated use of a fermentor at the brewery to expand that brand, never bore fruit. Warner disputes this, noting that in June of 2023 City-State signed with Capital Eagle for distribution while Urban Garden did not. The contract brewery brand continued to self-distribute. We do not know the fate of other brands that contract brew at City-State and, to be fair, we did not ask.
Nonetheless, the brewery remains a family-friendly location on the Metropolitan Beer Trail, opening as early as 10am on weekends to allow trainspotting toddlers some entertainment while their caretakers sip suds. We suggest you pay them a visit while you have the chance.
Watch this space, our social media, and City-State’s for details and specifics on their closing. It’s not all gloom and doom, however. Henceforth should open on H Street NE around the same time that City-State may close, and other openings include a third Right Proper location in Eckington later in the year. Urban Garden may follow near Fort Totten as well. In the meantime, send City-State out with a bang, more soon.
