Trumer Brauerei Berkeley filed a WARN notice covering 27 workers and ceased operations at 1404 Fourth St. on May 29, after The Gambrinus Company sold the U.S. brand rights to Firestone Walker of Paso Robles in March 2026. The building's future is unannounced.

The building at 1404 Fourth St. in Berkeley went dark May 29. That's the date on the WARN notice Trumer Brauerei Berkeley filed with California: 27 workers, permanent layoffs, end of operations. The pilsner made on this block is still in production — it just isn't made here anymore.

The deal that produced that notice was announced March 27, when The Gambrinus Company — the Texas-based holding group that owned Trumer's U.S. operations — transferred the brand to Firestone Walker Brewing Company of Paso Robles. Terms were not disclosed. The arrangement, as reported by Berkeleyside and the San Francisco Chronicle: Firestone Walker takes the brand and recipes, Gambrinus retains the Berkeley building, the Fourth Street taproom closes, and production moves south to the Central Coast.

"Our priority has always been to grow and steward Trumer Pils and ensure its future here in the United States," Gambrinus president and CEO John Brozovich said at the time of the announcement. "Entrusting the brand to a family brewery that understands this responsibility was very important to us."

Firestone Walker's CEO described the deal's origins to the San Luis Obispo Tribune: "We entered into an agreement, started with a handshake, and then we crossed the Ts and dotted the Is and agreed for us to pick it up and carry this very storied brand into its next chapter."

Trumer Pils had been brewed in Berkeley under a licensing arrangement with Trumer Brauerei in Salzburg, Austria, making the Fourth Street plant the sole U.S. production site for the Austrian lager. Brewmaster Lars Larson ran production there.

The WARN notice counted 27 affected workers across the brewery and taproom. Gambrinus separately reported only six impacted employees — a discrepancy the company has not publicly explained, though it likely reflects a split between corporate staff and hourly brewery and taproom workers.

The first Paso Robles-brewed batches are now reaching Bay Area shelves, per SFGate. What Gambrinus plans for the Fourth Street property is not publicly known; no new permits have been filed for the address. The taproom is closed. The building is an industrial structure in a corridor that used to make something, and as of this writing, nobody has said what it makes next.