Mobtown Brewing Company celebrates 7 Years in Baltimore's Brewers Hill

The only operational brewery in Baltimore's Brewers Hill neighborhood, Mobtown Brewing Company, is celebrating its seventh anniversary.

After seven challenging years, including a pandemic that hit just as they reached their first anniversary, head brewer and co-owner David Carpenter is looking forward. 

The brewery recently solidified its future by signing a new seven-year lease.

"Hopefully smooth sailing from here," Carpenter said.

Mobtown Brewing Company is down the street from where the former National Brewing Company and the Gunther Brewing Company were located, and the Natty Boh Tower is just a few blocks away. 

The brewery is located in a former Westinghouse Electric Corp. factory building at 4015 Foster Avenue. You can see remnants of that history inside. 

If you look up, you'll see big cranes (no longer operational) painted bright yellow decorating the ceiling. You're greeted by the industrial feel as soon as you walk in, along with vibrant murals and a long list of beers on tap, but stealing the spotlight and the hearts of customers is its brewery cat, Ernie.

Ernie the brewery cat

"I mean, he's our biggest draw," Carpenter said. "People come here just to see Ernie."

Ernie, almost 22 years old, has been at the brewery since it opened in 2019. At the time, there were two brewery cats, Bert and Ernie, but Bert died a few years after the brewery opened.

"Ernie is still chugging along," Carpenter said. "This summer he'll be 22 years old."

Carpenter became the owner of the cats after his parents passed away.

"When we sold my parents' house, they had four cats at the time, so we ended up taking them all back to my rowhome in Canton, and it was just way too many cats," Carpenter said. "So when we opened the brewery, two of them got selected to come here, and that was Bert and Ernie."

Ernie is such a staple that he's even on the brewery's merchandise, like t-shirts and tap signs. Customers can find him lounging on his miniature orange sofa behind the bar or on the bar itself.

"He likes to jump up on the bar," Carpenter said. "He won't drink beer, luckily, but he will go after your glass of water."

And the customers agree, it's adorable.

"Every time I see him drink out of the water cup, I'm like, 'This is so cute,'" customer Bernadette Smith said. "Maybe the brewery life is what we need for that longevity."

Dogs, beer and trivia

Ernie's not the only furry friend in the brewery; dogs are also welcome.

"We're welcoming to everyone," Carpenter said. "We allow dogs inside, we're family-friendly, and we also have a great beer selection."

One beer always on the menu is Mobtown's hazy IPA called "The Doctor Says I'm Hazy." It's the brewery's most popular beer.

"It's one of the first beers that I brewed here, and it's also the one that I brew the most, so I've had a lot of time to work on it and kind of perfect the recipe," Carpenter said.

That's the beer Bernadette Smith most consistently orders when she attends trivia nights. 

Mobtown works with Charm City Trivia to hold trivia nights on Thursdays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. They usually have between 14 and 17 teams, with up to eight people on each team.

"It's nice cause like we know the bartender, she knows us," said trivia participant Ally Colley. "We know the host, which is fun, and yeah, we've started to like pick up on the other teams, we know who they are, and we kind of build our own community."

Engineer turned brewer 

Fully submerged in the brewing world, head brewer and co-owner David Carpenter has come to know a lot of the other brewers and brewery owners in Baltimore.

"We're a pretty close-knit community and we all kind of support each other and help each other out, which I think is a really great thing for Baltimore," he said.

Carpenter was a geotechnical engineer in the city for 17 years before making the career jump to brewing full-time.

"Kind of that whole time [while working as an engineer] I was home brewing and kind of increasing my skill and getting better at it… I had much more fun brewing, so I thought it would be a great idea to quit my job and start a brewery," Carpenter said.

It all started with a Mr. Beer home brew kit from his brother, and he gradually increased and upgraded his equipment until he was doing 10-gallon batches in his backyard.

"As an engineer, I always have to make sure that I have a factor of safety," Carpenter said.

So before opening a brewery, he enrolled in the University of California, Davis' Master Brewers Certificate Program and spent six months completing the intensive program.

Within a year of coming back, he opened Mobtown Brewing Company. He co-owns the brewery with two partners: a former coworker and a former home-brewing competitor.

"I personally like all different types of beer, and I like to kind of test my skills by trying new stuff, creating recipes all the time so we always have a constantly rotating draft list," Carpenter said.

Charm City Heat Festival 

Coming up on Mobtown Brewing Company's events calendar is the 3rd annual Charm City Heat Festival. The hot sauce festival and competition is Saturday, July 11, from noon to 9 p.m.

Along with hosting the festival, Mobtown will have some special drinks—a spicy beer, spicy hard seltzer and a spicy slushie.

Find more events at Mobtown Brewing here.