Good news out of Ramona, where patience has finally paid off. Smoking Cannon Brewery has opened a new satellite tasting room less than two blocks from its original brewery, ending an 11-month permitting saga that nearly sank the project before it poured a single pint.

The story starts last year, when Cassie and Eric Goforth bought Smoking Cannon, Ramona’s lone brewing company, from founders Mike Nelson and Natallie Phillips. To grow production to meet demand, they planned to convert their combo brewery and taproom into a production-only facility, which would leave them with nowhere to serve customers. Since nearly all of Smoking Cannon’s revenue comes from across-the-counter sales, they needed a new public venue first.

They found one close by. Working with Pamo Valley Winery, they arranged to share an 855-square-foot space with 2,000 square feet of front and back patio at 638 Main Street, just north of the brewery. On paper, it looked like a quick win, a space that would need minimal work to win approval.

Reality had other plans. Federal clearance came almost immediately, but the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control came back with issue after issue, each round bringing new action items. The process dragged on for roughly 11 months, all while rent on the new space kept coming due with no revenue to offset it. By the end, the Goforths were nearing a fish-or-cut-bait decision. Then, on the first Friday of October, the ABC finally signed off, and the new location is now open.

It is a small-town story with a big lesson: the hardest part of opening a taproom is often not the brewing, it is the paperwork. We are glad Ramona’s only brewery made it through, and we hope the new room gives the Goforths room to finish their production expansion.

Elsewhere in the county, the news is about quieter growth. In Bay Park, Deft Brewing has upsized its brewhouse from two barrels to three and a half barrels and upgraded most of its fermentation tanks. The lager house, part of The Garten hub, can now brew two to three times a week instead of four or five while keeping its taps stocked and producing more lagers. Co-founder and brewmaster Mo Nuspl credits the small system for helping the brewery weather a turbulent market, saying: “Being lean and having a relatively small system has helped us handle challenges.”

Downtown, there is a new name and a future brewery to watch. Timestead, the Gaslamp bar and restaurant at Fourth Avenue and C Street, is now called Infinite Bar and Grille under majority owner Rhett Terrebonne, founder of the defunct Niuhi Brewing. Terrebonne plans to install a Hawaiian-themed operation called Makali’i Brewing in the venue’s 1,700-square-foot brewery space, which previously housed Resident Brewing before it shuttered in January 2025. There is no firm debut date yet.

For a county beer scene that has seen its share of closures lately, that is a welcome change of pace.

Sources: San Diego Beer News, Beer Briefs: New and Improved, October 28, 2026, https://sandiegobeer.news/beer-briefs-roadies-smoking-cannon-deft-brewing/