Kings & Convicts Brewing, the tiny north suburban operation whose founder stunned the beer world in late 2019 by buying the famed Ballast Point brewery, is scrapping a plan to build a new headquarters in southern Wisconsin and heading instead to Ballast Point’s longtime home of San Diego.
Though it will maintain its tiny Highwood, Illinois, taproom at least in the short term, Kings & Convicts will center business in what has been Saint Archer Brewing, a brand bought by Molson Coors in 2015 at the height of the trend of large beer companies buying small, upstart craft breweries.
Kings & Convicts broke ground in 2019 on what was to be a 50,000-square-foot production brewery in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, about 5 miles north of the Illinois border. The project was not completed, and the deal between the brewery and the land’s developer dissolved.
