The Taproom Squeeze: What Grand Forks Loses When a Brewery Stage Goes Dark
A brewery is not, strictly speaking, a music venue. But in a mid-sized northern city, the difference is mostly on paper — the taproom stage is where a lot of local bands get their first paying, listening, non-wedding crowd, and when the taprooms wobble, the scene feels it. Grand Forks has been feeling it.
The clearest marker is Rhombus Guys Brewing, which opened in 2015 as the city's first microbrewery, ran a downtown taproom on South 3rd Street that hosted live music among its events, and then closed that taproom and wound down brewing operations after 2023. Owner Matt Winjum framed it at the time as a choice to step back and refocus on the popular Rhombus Guys pizza restaurant on Kittson Avenue — which remains open and busy. But the taproom stage is gone, and no amount of good pizza replaces a room where a band can plug in.
The Grand Forks Herald put that closure in national context, reporting that the craft-beer boom had cooled hard — industry growth sliding from double digits a few years earlier to the low single digits, overall U.S. beer volume falling — and that Grand Forks brewers were feeling the same squeeze. Half Brothers Brewing, the North 3rd Street brewery that has carried much of downtown's live-music load, told the paper the news "puts things in perspective," and has had its own rough patches: staffing shortages in a tight labor market forced it to temporarily close its kitchen in 2024.
And yet — this is the part that matters — Half Brothers is still standing, and still hosting bands. The same brewery that felt the squeeze also canned its one-millionth beer in 2024 and now distributes across five states and into Manitoba. Its summer live-music nights, typically Thursdays with a monthly open mic, are one of the few consistent downtown stages a local original act can actually get booked on. Resilience, in this market, looks like a brewery that had every reason to cut the entertainment budget and kept the stage lit anyway.
Why this belongs on a music blog and not just a business page: a scene's ceiling is set by its arenas, but its floor is set by its taprooms and bar stages. The Alerus can only give Grand Forks a handful of nights a year. The room where a twenty-two-year-old UND kid with a guitar plays for forty people and a bar tab — that room is the actual farm system, and every time one closes, the pipeline narrows. The Rhombus taproom's shuttering wasn't a tragedy; it was a warning shot.
So here's the unglamorous call to action: drink where the bands play. Buy the beer at the brewery that keeps the stage. In a squeezed market, a full Thursday taproom is worth more to the future of Grand Forks music than any single arena sellout. Show up on a slow night, not just a big one.
Sources: As national craft beer market contracts, Grand Forks brewers feel the squeeze — Grand Forks Herald; Rhombus Guys Brewing closes downtown taproom — Grand Forks Herald; Grand Forks-based Half Brothers cans its 1 millionth beer — Grand Forks Herald; Half Brothers Brewing Company to close kitchen — Grand Forks Herald