Heavy Seas Beer Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Will Keep Brewing

Heavy Seas Beer, one of Maryland’s oldest and largest craft breweries, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company says it is reorganizing, not closing.

Clipper City Brewing Company, L.P., which does business as Heavy Seas, filed a voluntary petition Nov. 8 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore under Subchapter V, a faster reorganization track for small businesses. The filing lists estimated assets and liabilities of $1 million to $10 million each, and fewer than 50 creditors. The largest debt is a long-term loan of more than $2.3 million from Wells Fargo. Suppliers including WestRock, MaltEurop and Ball Corp. are among the unsecured creditors.

Heavy Seas will keep brewing, distributing and operating its taproom in Halethorpe while the case moves forward, the company said.

“Over the years, we’ve weathered plenty of storms, adapted, adjusted our sails, and kept moving forward,” the brewery said in a statement. “Today, the craft beer industry is facing some serious headwinds.”

Craft Beer Issues

These are the same issues you read every time a brewery fails, sells, or has a financial issue. Heavy Seas pointed to falling craft beer sales, rising costs for energy, labor, packaging, hops, malt and freight, and distributor consolidation. Heavy Seas reported more than $5 million in revenue this year through Nov. 7, most of it from wholesale, but says it can’t raise prices enough to cover costs without losing volume.

The brewery has been shrinking for years. Heavy Seas produced 24,551 barrels in 2024, less than half of the 51,380 barrels it made in 2019, according to Maryland state tax data.

Founder Hugh Sisson, 72, also plans to retire, though no date has been set. Heavy Seas announced it was joining B3 Beverage Company, the East Coast brewery platform that includes Yards, Two Roads and Bald Birds, but that deal did not close.

Is a sale emminent? “It buys us time,” said Caroline Sisson, the brewery’s director of marketing and Hugh Sisson’s daughter.

Hugh Sisson, the Maryland legend

Hugh Sisson helped change Maryland law to allow brewpubs and opened the state’s first, Sisson’s, in 1989. He founded Clipper City in 1995, brewing its first beer on Dec. 8 of that year, and moved the beers under the Heavy Seas name in 2010. Loose Cannon IPA and Winter Storm Imperial ESB became its best-known beers.

BSJ has reached out to Heavy Seas for comment and will update this story.