Vice Beer Co. is taking over the taproom space in downtown Vancouver currently occupied by Trap Door Brewing. To be clear, this doesn’t impact Trap Door’s other location: the brewery and taproom in Washougal. Also, it doesn’t affect the taproom they’re creating in nearby Brush Prairie, slated to open next year. Just the Uptown Vancouver spot is changing hands.
This will mark location number three for Vice Beer, which already runs a brewery and taproom on Vancouver’s east end plus a smaller taproom downtown (Little Vice). The new-to-them spot sits just north of downtown on Main Street, in the Uptown Village business district. Credit where it’s due — New School Beer + Cider broke this story first, and you can read their original report here.
Full disclosure: we’d heard whispers about a possible ownership change at Trap Door’s Uptown location a couple weeks back, but couldn’t confirm anything at the time. Now we can.
It is worth noting that this change comes not long after some events at Trap Door that stirred up plenty of conversation in the community — divisive is probably a better word than controversial. Whether that played any role in this decision, we honestly don’t know, and we will not speculate.
Brian Shull, the owner of Trap Door Brewing, explained to us when announcing the plans in Brush Prairie that the businesses are purposefully structured to operate independently: each location is (will be) its own business entity. That probably made the handoff to Vice Beer a lot easier.
One more thing worth keeping an eye on: Brian Shull is juggling a lot right now. Beyond running Trap Door and pushing forward those ambitious plans for the Brush Prairie taproom and food truck court, he announced back in April that he’s running for a seat on the Clark County Council. The election is in November.
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