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Half Pints Brewing is back. The Winnipeg craft brewery, which fell into bankruptcy in May, started returning beers such as St. James Pale Ale and Little Scrapper IPA to store shelves on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, and its taproom will reopen before the end of October, new owner Andrew Holtmann told the Winnipeg Free Press.
Our sensors have spent most of this year recording breweries going dark. A signal flickering back on is rare enough that the Bureau stopped what it was doing to log the return of Half Pints Brewing.
How Half Pints Brewing came back for “about the price of a car”
Holtmann bought Half Pints Brewing Company Ltd.’s assets out of bankruptcy in June, the Free Press reports. That included the name, the equipment and the recipes, for a figure he said amounted to “about the price of a car.” He has since put another $250,000 into ingredients and equipment, including a canning line.
One of his first moves was to hire Half Pints founder David Rudge as brewmaster, which keeps the Half Pints Brewing recipes in the hands that wrote them.
“The beers that (Dave’s) been making for 20 years have stood the test of time. Winnipeggers like them and we’re really just focused on getting the same great beers back out so people can keep enjoying them.”
— Andrew Holtmann, to the Winnipeg Free Press
Rudge sounds content with the arrangement: “I wake up, I’m excited, I come to work, I brew beer — everybody’s happy.”
What’s back on Half Pints Brewing shelves
Besides St. James Pale Ale and Little Scrapper IPA, the Free Press lists Bulldog Amber Ale, Stir Stick Stout, Code Name: Ghost IPA and the seasonal Oktoberfest among the returning beers. Bikey McBikeface, a grapefruit lager, is also hitting shelves again after a hiatus of more than two years. The Bureau has no tasting notes to offer, only the roll call.
Twenty years, one bankruptcy, one rescue
Rudge started Half Pints in 2006, when national and international beer ruled the market and only Fort Garry Brewing shared the city, according to the Free Press. The brewery later moved to the St. James neighbourhood and employed 14 people at its peak. Rudge also lobbied the province to make it easier for craft breweries to operate and open licensed taprooms. The paper notes that Manitoba went from two craft brewers in 2014 to 26 brick-and-mortar breweries and another 12 contract breweries by 2023-24.
The decline was quieter. Rudge and the ownership group, which included family members, decided to sell in early 2025 and announced it on social media that March. No buyer appeared, and Half Pints Brewing fell into bankruptcy in May. “It’s just the way that sometimes business goes,” Rudge said. “I wasn’t too worried about it.”
For now the Half Pints Brewing staff is two people, Holtmann and Rudge, but Holtmann told the paper he expects to hire around eight in the next month. His stated goal is to get back to the brewery’s pre-pandemic peak production, then exceed it by 50 per cent.
A rare comeback in a year of closures
Context matters here. In California, our look at fewer craft breweries opening and two North County losses tracked a state that shrank from 987 breweries to 939 in two years. Memphis just watched Crosstown Brewing close its taproom. The happier comparisons are scarcer: in St. Paul, Summit Brewing found a new lender for its BMO loans and kept its doors open. Half Pints Brewing goes a step further, a brewery that actually went under and came back with its founder at the kettle.
Local voices are glad. “It’s amazing to see that Half Pints is back,” said Raj Maniar, who organizes the Beer is Art festival at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Steve Nelson, manager at the Beer Boutique on Regent Avenue West, said the brand was always in high demand when his store carried it, and that supporting local beer matters to him amid the Canada-U.S. trade war. “It puts a spotlight on Manitoba and all the great beer we have here, and Dave Rudge is, without question, a pioneer in that,” he said.
All attributions above are per the Winnipeg Free Press report by Aaron Epp. When the Half Pints Brewing taproom reopens later this month, the Bureau suggests raising a St. James Pale Ale to the rarest event in 2026 craft beer: a second chance. Watch the brewery’s official site for the date.
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