Black Cap Brewing Company in Red Lion to close in April, owner says

A Red Lion brewery will shutter its doors in April, according to the establishment’s owner.

Black Cap Brewing Company, located on West High Street in Red Lion, announced the closure with a post on Facebook that showed the final batch of General Gates Porter, its most popular beer.

“I feel bad that we’re doing this,” Black Cap owner Greg Bentley said. “We became a part of the community here and this has become a place for people to meet and hang out.”

Story continues below the Facebook post.

Bentley said the decision to close first came up a few months ago when the property, which he was leasing, went up for sale. Soon after, an opportunity to sell all the equipment and fixtures came from a man opening a brew pub in Virginia, and Bentley, the sole owner, decided it was time to close the bar.

“It’s a pretty big lift for someone like me to do (on my own),” Bentley said. “It’s just something we had to deal with.”

Bentley and then-partner Jim Waller opened the brewery on Dec. 4, 2014, in the former post office as a place that “we’d like to go as beer guys,” Waller told the Daily Record in 2015.

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Bentley said the business was “in decent shape,” but the potential of buying a commercial piece of real estate wasn’t something he was looking to take a risk on. That said, he was proud of the business that the brewery had done.

“We’ve met a bunch of terrific people and a lot of our customers are like family,” Bentley said. “Personally, I feel bad (about closing), but all of our customers seem to understand that I had to make the decision. We will miss everybody.”

Although Black Cap will close, Bentley isn’t against getting back into the business in the future.

“If the right opportunity came along to do this again,” he said, “I would definitely do it.”

Anthony J. Machcinski is the food reporter for the York Daily Record. Follow him on Facebook, @ChinskiTweets on Twitter or email him at amachcinski@ydr.com.