CLEVELAND — It's never a good day when a business decides to close its doors, but when someone else local decides to carry on the legacy, the day gets a little brighter.
Bookhouse Brewing on West 25th Street ceased to exist in 2025 due to a variety of reasons.
"Part of that shift as well is you see beer competing for what you could call a like share of wallet, right? It's competing with legalized gambling, it's competing with legalized marijuana, it's competing with, you know, delivery apps, ride share, whatever else, all these little things that take little bits of discretionary income," Vaughn Stewart told me in December when asked about the closure.
WATCH:
RELATED: Cleveland's Bookhouse Brewing to permanently close this month
Vaughn Stewart described owning Bookhouse Brewing as unsustainable due to rising costs for products like carbon dioxide, as well as rent, fees, and interest rates.
"Just to be a brewery in the state of Ohio, the license is $1,000 a year, and that's just to make beer," he told me. "To be a brewery that can also sell wine, liquor, and other beer is $3,800 a year, and you also have to pay that $1,000 so it's really $4,800 a year."
Bookhouse Brewing officially closed its doors after New Year's Eve.
Five months later, a new brewery is taking over: Anthology Cask House.
"The opportunity really came out of like this already being such a beautiful space and a space that we were super familiar with, regulars at. When Vaughn approached us about maybe moving in here, it felt like kind of a natural thing to do. We're just excited to preserve it and kind of keep it going with its intended use and historical use because this was a brewery from 1866. We were just really excited to keep it going and kind of do it justice and bring something new at the same time," Anthology Cask House co-owner Shaun Yasaki told me Thursday.
As Yasaki is renovating the Anthology Cask House, he is also curating a beer garden at Lorain Avenue and West 38th Avenue. He also owns the Noble Beast Brewing Company.
"We're working on a beer garden. We didn't wanna do just kind of one more of the same vein of things, so instead, you know, running this more like a brew pub or kind of a traditional brewery, going more for like an old school traditional beer bar, which doesn't really exist too much anymore," Yasaki said.
The Anthology Cask House will have an English pub, Belgian cafe feel.
Yasaki said the brewery will bring in European imports: Belgian beers, German drafts, English bubblies.
The brewery will include a cask-conditioned real ale, which is beer that undergoes a secondary fermentation. It requires a manually operated pump, also known as a beer engine.
The Anthology Cask House will also offer food provided by its neighbor, Little Cloud.
"We're gonna put a little hole in the wall and food will come directly in. They'll be staying open for our hours and making a custom menu just for us," Yasaki said.
Before a soft opening, Yasaki said the venue is undergoing some renovations, such as fresh paint, carpentry behind the bar, and installation of TVs and a sound system.
"How long do you think it's gonna take you to complete everything?" I asked Yasaki.
He told me, "We're trying to get it all done within a couple of months."
"So, we're talking like maybe July?" I asked him.
Yasaki said, "Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, famous last words."
The Anthology Cask House isn't the only one to recently join the brew market in Northeast Ohio.
Just in the last couple of months, in Cleveland, you've got:
- Birdtown Brewing
- Mosaic Brewing Company
- Two Friends Brewing
In Euclid, a new location of Collision Bend Brewing Company also sprouted this year.
The onslaught of new breweries in the area seems to be a complete 180 from my reporting in November 2025, when the Ohio Craft Brewers Association told me roughly 30 breweries in the state were closing or expecting to close by the end of the year.
WATCH:
RELATED: More Ohio breweries have closed than opened in 2025 so far
Ohio Craft Brewers Association Executive Director Mary MacDonald said on Thursday, "Here's the thing, all of the brewery licenses, because they're manufacturer's licenses, they all renew in October, right? When people are having to make the business decision of whether they're gonna spend several thousands on a license, if they don't intend to proceed till the end of the year, we tend to see more closings."
MacDonald said the fourth quarter of the year is typically the roughest for closings, whereas the first quarter presents many openings.
"If you've got brews in planning, once everyone makes it through the first quarter, Saint Patrick's Day is kind of like, 'Oh, the light, it's spring! Let's open up,' because the second and third and fourth quarters always tend to be much stronger, right? Just in general in business and especially in hospitality businesses. So, yes, it's spring. The rain has produced more breweries. They're like flowers, they're popping up in their neighborhoods."
MacDonald said the state of breweries in Ohio is on par with the last three years, despite fluctuations in openings and closings.
"We had about 60 breweries in 2013 when the law was changed that enabled them to create the A1C license that really enabled people to open a craft brewery more easily than it was before. We have 430 some breweries now," MacDonald said.
What the Ohio craft brewery industry needs more of, in her opinion, is continuity of community.
"We'll have a lot of small towns contact us and say, 'Oh, I have a great building for a brewery.' That's great, but if someone's heart isn't in that community, it's hard to transplant what they love to do to somewhere else," MacDonald said. "Find your local homebrewer who has a passion for your community and has a passion for brewing, and that is the ideal person to open a brewery in your community."
MacDonald said there are currently 10 breweries in planning for the Cleveland area and five others around Northeast Ohio.
"We're a very mature industry now, and so it's not just enough to make good beer, you also have to be part of your community and offer experiences for your customers," MacDonald said. "A lot of times that's pairing really good food."
For Yasaki, his concepts all include food.
"This (owning a brewery) is a terrible way to make money. Like don't do it because you think you're gonna get rich. It's not gonna work, so it's something that you're passionate about and that shows through into the final product. A lot of our success has come through the quality of our food program in the kitchen," Yasaki said.
Yasaki gives thanks to chef James Redford, who is also a co-owner of Anthology Cask House.
"Chef James has put out a great menu. It's farm to table we're always using, you know, local Ohio ingredients that we can use for seasonal stuff. I think our food program has been a huge part of our success and you'll see a lot of the breweries that have shut down, you know, have more of the taproom model which struggles currently," Yasaki said.
While Yasaki acknowledges economic struggles impacting his business, he told me the payoff in watching his vision come to life is well worth it.
MacDonald said the craft industry is alive and well, growing each day, so to see it where it's at in Ohio is a great reminder.
"Craft beer has held a 13% market share or above pretty steadily since 2018 with the exception of 2020 and 2020 doesn't count for anyone, right? We're still about 25% of the industry by dollar shares. Despite the fact that we have breweries closing and breweries opening. We're just a more mature market," MacDonald said. "There's still a lot of bright spots."
If you're looking to support local craft brew, Mystery Beer Date will be on May 14 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Market District on Pearl Road in Strongsville.
CLICK HERE for more information.
