Sisyphus Brewing at 12
The Tulip and Schooner for June 12, 2026
The Tulip and Schooner is edited and primarily written by Louis Livingston-Garcia.
SISYPHUS AT 12
While Sisyphus has throttled down its brewing, its comedy game is better than ever
By Loren Green
If there’s a recurring theme for craft beer in the mid-2020s, it’s closures and consolidation. From brewery owners retiring to shifting business models, it’s a period of change – and one that often comes with lost jobs and a lost third space for consumers.
We can take the easy route and blame The Economy, but the truth is that running a brewery is complex. Every business has a unique model and plan. It’s necessary to succeed.
Sisyphus Brewing in Loring Park has a dual focus of beer and comedy, and it’s worked out for the brewery so far. They sell all their beer in-house and they give 100% of ticket sales to the performers – both are uncommon in their industries. But Sisyphus is also unique for talking openly about business, right down to the numbers.
After owner Sam Harriman posted the brewery’s financial spreadsheets on Reddit, we reached out to ask why – and what’s next as he weighs an expiring lease.
HEAVY TABLE: You’re 12 years old now. How has the journey been so far?
SAM HARRIMAN: I think the industry is where I expected it to be with craft beer popularity plateauing or even declining for a while. The idea at the beginning was to have the dual space use with the comedy club and the taproom, with the idea that eventually the comedy would get more popular than the beer and be the more long-term vision or goal.
That’s definitely come true. I really underestimated what would happen to craft beer, especially with the younger generation – Gen Z is hardly drinking at all. We see that with the show demographics. If we have a younger comic in, where everybody’s like 21 to 24, sales are half of what they would be for a normal show.
HT: You scaled back and returned to what I would call your “Day One Job” of wearing many hats. Do you like doing that work, or is it a necessity?
HARRIMAN: I like doing the work. Honestly, bartending is the thing I like the least. It’s not really my cup of tea but it’s one of those things that you’ve got to do.
I love brewing full-time. But scaling back and adapting – I didn’t really know what that would look like. I was hoping to get to the point where I was just an owner running things. And I was doing that for a while, but COVID really changed everything.
I started with the mindset of being a sustainable business. We went in with no debt. We did take out a small loan when we started the comedy room, but paid that off pretty quickly… [But] one of the levers I have to pull is labor costs.
HT: You were never trying to be a giant brewery?
HARRIMAN: At the beginning, we were shooting for 500 barrels a year and we were at that for close to two years. Now we’re at 300. We might be the smallest of the Twin Cities now.
It’s the sustainability thing. I want to do this as a career. I wanted to build it in a way that I could do this and not have to depend on selling 3,000 barrels a year for the rest of eternity.
