- Location
- 1600 Barrancas Ave.
- Years
- 1935 - 1987
- Now
- Vacant lot / Spearman Center
When Prohibition ended in 1933, a new venture called the Gulf Brewing Company touted Pensacola’s “99.999 percent pure water” as ideal for beer production. Soon renamed the Spearman Brewing Company after owner Guy Spearman, it began shipping beer from its Barrancas Ave. brewery in May 1935. “The Pure Water Does It” was the company’s slogan for decades, despite the factory’s proximity to the American Creosote Works site.
It had a peak capacity of 500,000 barrels per year, with much of that consumed by U.S. service members. Spearman sold the company in 1960 to Louis Hertzberg and sons, who marketed the local product under several different labels.
Production ceased in 1964, and the warehouse space was briefly used for distribution of New Jersey-based Metropolis Brewery. After more than a decade of failed plans for the site, the skeletal steel frame of the building was demolished in 1987.