Pic(k) of the Week: Sisson's

Sisson's Restaurant & Brewery was the first brewpub to operate in Maryland after the repeal of Prohibition —some 56 years earlier— when an 8-barrel brewhouse was installed in the Baltimore, Maryland pub 1989.

Sisson's had originally opened as a non-brewing pub in 1979; it was sold and remodeled as Ryleigh's Oyster in 2002; the brewing equipment was removed and shipped to a brewery in West Virginia in 2005.

Here, in this photo, the brewhouse sits idle.

Sisson's small size belied its influence. Its general manager, Hugh Sisson, would successfully lobby the Maryland Assembly (with the able assistance of a Baltimore City representative) to permit the legal existence of brewpubs in the state. Others would soon follow his lead in Virginia and the District of Columbia. Sisson would later found Clipper City Brewing Company, now known as Heavy Seas.

These photos were taken in November of 2000, just after the Sisson family had sold its remaining stake in the pub.

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Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, usually posted on Saturdays, and often of a good fermentable as subject.