Brew News Spotlight: Nanobrewery for Sale

The owners of Oddball Brewing Co. in Suncook have put the entire business, including its brand, its retail and restaurant accounts and its recipes, up for sale.

Co-owner Bill Walden of Hillsborough said he and his partner Mark Ferguson of Chichester made the decision back in April.

“It’s sad for all of us involved. It wasn’t the envisioned endpoint, but unfortunately, life brings you what it does, rather than what you want,” Walden said.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is partly to blame, it’s not that the nanobrewery itself suffered.

Walden said sales have continued to be strong and their beers have proven successful in the southern New Hampshire area. Aside from its 20-seat taproom at 6 Glass Street in Suncook, their beers can be found in 16-ounce cans in stores as far north as Wolfborough and as far east as Epping.

Rather, the reason for selling the business has more to do with Walden’s and Ferguson’s full-time careers as healthcare workers. Both met each other working as respiratory therapists at Concord Hospital, and started the business in 2015, united by their shared passion for beer.

“We both work in healthcare, and the goal was to eventually transition out of that to the brewery and we were just never able to make that transition,” Walden said.

Walden started to transition when he began working at the hospital on a per diem basis, but the COVID crisis necessitated him to return to full-time.

“Suffice it to say the hospital is really busy,” he said.

Walden said if they were to continue with growing the business it would require more of their time than the owners will be able to give, since the next steps would likely involve expanding the building capacity and investing in new equipment.

Over the past six years, Walden said the business has been good. They were able to pay off everything and always pay their bills on time. Aside from the work they put into the 1,200-square-foot space and actually going from homebrew hobbyists to professionals, Walden said some of their greatest successes have been marked by their most popular beers. These include Oddball’s Albino Moose IPA (6.7 percent), Vow of Silence Belgian (10.5 percent) and Siren Stout (8.5 percent), an Irish Imperial.

Walden is also proud of their first lager, Suncook Lager (5 percent) which is a more technically complicated beer for a craft brewer to make.

After getting the space ready, the owners posted the sale in the summer, seeking a price of $295,000, which Walden said would essentially recoup their personal investments.

Buyers would get the building and all the equipment inside. The seven-barrel brewery operates with a three-vessel system. Their equipment includes two 400-gallon fermenters, two 210-gallon brite tanks, a two-head countertop can filler, an Oktober seamer, a kegerator with eight taps and 186 kegs (150 1/6bbl and 36 1/4bbl). There’s also a cold-storage space.

They don’t have any employees.

Their goal is to sell the business as a “turnkey operation” according to the company website, rather than parse out the equipment. So far, Walden said they have a number of prospective buyers who are doing their due diligence on the finances.

Once a new owner takes over they can do what they want with the business; they can continue operating it under the same brand and make the same beers, or they can rebrand and change the menu.

Walden said they aren’t looking for any specific type of buyer — a first-time business owner, a larger existing company or something in between.

“We’re looking for someone who’s passionate about beer. That’s really the big point,” Walden said.

Interested parties can reach out to the owners by emailing them at Oddbbrewing@gmail.com.

Until it’s sold, the brewery is continuing to operate with regular business hours, though taproom hours are changed during the holiday season, and they have plans to attend beer festivals. The next on the calendar is the Beveridge Ice Fest in Tuftonboro on Jan. 29.