San Pedro's Old Brewery Isn't a Brewery Anymore, and That's the Whole Story

Walk past 110 E. 22nd St. on a Wednesday night this year and you'll hear King Trivia questions being read over a PA system, see a handful of dogs parked under picnic tables, and watch someone's kid get her face painted near the bar. Ask most of the people standing there what the place is called and half will still say "the brewery." They're wrong, and the reason they're wrong is the actual story.

For years, this address belonged to Brouwerij West, a working brewery that filled the western half of a converted WWII-era Navy warehouse with fermenters and taproom stools. Then, sometime in 2025, it went dark. By January 2026, the building had sat empty long enough that the team keeping the lights on next door was covering payroll for staff who had nowhere to work. When the space reopened on February 1, 2026, it wasn't Brouwerij West anymore. It was Warehouse 9, and the beer license behind the name change is why the building can now do things the old brewery never could.

The License Detail Everyone Skipped Past

Brouwerij West operated under a brewer's license, the kind that restricts what you can legally pour to what you produce on site. That's standard for a working brewery, and it's also a ceiling. You can build a taproom around your own lagers and IPAs, but you can't easily add a cider tap, a hard seltzer, or a kombucha option without violating the terms of your own permit.

Warehouse 9 doesn't operate that way. According to reporting from San Pedro Today, the new ownership secured a broader ABC license that lets the venue pour multiple brands rather than only what it manufactures. That single change is why the current menu includes Town Cider out of Corvallis, Ashland Hard Seltzer from San Diego, and Boochcraft Hard Kombucha alongside rotating craft beer, with plans to expand from 14 to 28 taps and add non-alcoholic cocktails. It's also why the venue can stay all-ages and family-friendly instead of functioning as a brewery taproom with a strict 21-and-up feel.

Getting that license transferred took roughly a month, which explains the gap between Brouwerij West's closure and Warehouse 9's grand opening. Owner Oron Kotlizky framed the choice to bring back the old staff in plain terms:

"We know people love hanging out at this unique location, and it's important to us to continue serving San Pedro in this way."

That's not just sentiment. Rehiring the Brouwerij West bartenders and managers meant the venue reopened with institutional memory intact, which is part of why regulars say it still feels like the same room even though the legal category underneath it changed completely.

A Calendar the Old Brewery Never Ran

A brewer's license gets you a taproom. A broader ABC license gets you a calendar, and Warehouse 9 built one fast. King Trivia launched on Wednesdays starting February 4, and karaoke nights hosted by DJ Wix followed on Thursdays. Weekends run on live music booked through MBF Productions, the same San Pedro-based events company that worked with Brouwerij West before it, so the throughline in entertainment programming survived even though the beverage program didn't.

The grand opening itself doubled as a preview of what the venue wanted to become. Three bands with deep local roots played the bill: Warehouse One, described as Cali reggae with San Pedro vibes; Killer Dreamer, representing the town's punk scene; and Ivy League Suit, blending punk energy with melodic hooks. Miller Butler served wood-fired pizza and Shady Grove Foods brought barbecue up from Long Beach, while local screen printer Calimucho ran a live printing station for merch. Kids got face painting. Dogs got to stay. Parking was free.

The venue leaned into that same civic register a few weeks later, hosting a Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting and business expo on January 29, and later opening up what staff call the Phase Three area for a Lunar New Year celebration, a section of the property that, according to San Pedro Today's coverage, few longtime San Pedrans even knew existed. By May 16, the programming reached its biggest swing yet with the free, all-ages San Pedro Music Festival headlined by local musician Windy Barnes. None of that would fit under a brewer's license built around selling your own beer to your own taproom crowd.

The Neighbor That Never Closed

Here's the part of the story that puts the license change in perspective. While Warehouse 9 sat dark for months waiting on paperwork, the marketplace next door in Warehouse No. 10 never missed a weekend.

That's CRAFTED, the artisan marketplace that's occupied the neighboring warehouse since 2012 and now houses more than 90 vendors selling handmade goods, alongside the San Pedro Art Association. CRAFTED runs Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., every week of the year, rain or dry dock. It didn't need Warehouse 9's transition to survive because it was never tied to a brewer's license or a single tenant's beverage program in the first place. It's simply been there, steadily, running workshops and rotating food trucks while the building next door changed hands twice.

CRAFTED's biggest weekend of 2026 came in late July, when the marketplace hosted its annual CraftyFest on July 25 and 26. The two-day event packed in jewelry making, henna, embroidery, candle making, and a parking lot lined with roughly 100 Volkswagen buses, all free to attend. That kind of steady, self-sustaining draw is exactly what let CRAFTED keep management staff on Warehouse 9's payroll during the licensing gap, according to San Pedro Today's reporting. The marketplace effectively floated its neighbor through the slow month, which says something about how tightly these two spaces are now linked even though they operate under completely different rules.

Where That Leaves the Rest of San Pedro's Beer Map

Warehouse 9's reinvention is easier to appreciate against the town's actual brewery, the one that never stopped being one. San Pedro Brewing Company has poured its own ales and lagers from 331 W. 6th St. in Little Italy since November 1999, when owner James Brown expanded the old John T's Tavern into a full brewpub. It still operates under the brewer's model Brouwerij West once used, which is why its beer list stays centered on house recipes like the Longshoreman Pilsner, a beer the Los Angeles Times once singled out as a patio favorite. If you want the closest thing San Pedro has to a legacy taproom experience, that's still where you'll find it, not at Warehouse 9.

A few blocks over, Port Town Brewery on 7th Street runs a smaller, quieter operation, closed Mondays and built more around trivia nights and a tighter neighborhood crowd than big weekend programming. And on the waterfront, Mike Hess Brewing announced plans to bring a 36,000-square-foot flagship brewery, restaurant, and distillery to West Harbor, targeting a spring 2026 debut and bringing a San Diego brand's polished, tourist-facing model to San Pedro's promenade.

Put those three next to Warehouse 9 and you get a town with two very different ideas of what a night out means. San Pedro Brewing Company and Mike Hess are brewery businesses first, built around what they make. Warehouse 9 gave up that identity on purpose and became something closer to a rented living room for the neighborhood, timed to a trivia app, a karaoke mic, and whichever band MBF books next. The building didn't get quieter when it stopped brewing. It got busier, because the thing that used to limit its Tuesday-through-Sunday pour list is exactly what it traded away.

Next time someone calls it "the brewery," you can tell them why that's no longer true, and why it's the reason the calendar looks the way it does.

San Pedro keeps handing out these small local puzzles, the kind you only notice if you're paying attention block by block. That's the same instinct Selling San Pedro brings to reading the town's housing market. If you're curious what your own corner of San Pedro is worth this year, reach out and ask what your home is worth.