(charlotteledger.substack.com)
Good morning! Today is Saturday, December 20, 2025. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger’s Weekend Edition.
Need to subscribe — or upgrade your Ledger e-newsletter subscription? Details here.
—
Hey, it’s Tony. You might have noticed that in the last few weeks, we’ve been adding these brief messages atop our newsletters. Maybe you find them annoying and maybe you don’t, but the idea is to make you smarter and to make this newsletter more personal — and to reinforce that our work is put together by actual humans, not faceless people or AI bots. Like you, our actual humans will be slowing down our work over the holidays. This is the final regular newsletter of 2025. You’ll still hear from us between now and January, with some end-of-year lists and thoughts, but we’ll mostly be spending time with loved ones and preparing for 2026. That’s what actual humans do this time of year! Cheers to a happy and safe holiday.
by Greg Lacour
In the galaxy of Charlotte craft breweries, Sycamore Brewing has always been a red giant: big, bright and impossible to miss, but lacking in substance compared to its counterparts.
It’s been a distant star as well. Charlotte’s craft beer community is generally collegial and cooperative, as it is in many cities. Brewery owners tend to be friends, and they’re known for helping each other with supplies, business advice and general support.
But since its founding in 2013, Sycamore has developed a reputation as a brewery focused on its own separate development — and that’s complicated the brewing community’s reaction to Sycamore co-founder Justin Brigham’s arrest last week on sex offenses involving a 13-year-old girl.
Brigham and his wife, Sarah, opened Sycamore’s original, 8,400 sq. ft. taproom on Hawkins Street in South End in 2014. They joined what at the time was a small but rapidly growing craft brewery roster, mainly in South End and NoDa.
Most of those early breweries — businesses that opened soon after state law allowed on-site beer consumption in 2011 — began as humble operations in refurbished industrial buildings, in neighborhoods that needed investment. Consider the original locations of NoDa Brewing and Birdsong Brewing, which opened across an alleyway from each other off North Davidson Street in late 2011, or Triple C Brewing, which has occupied a nondescript, boxy structure in LoSo since it opened in 2012.
Those establishments, like many independent breweries throughout the nation, began as passion projects by home brewers who wondered if they could convert their love of brewing into profit. By contrast, the Brighams began with an aggressive business approach that emphasized their location in South End, then just beginning to bustle with apartment construction near the Lynx light rail line.
“We knew we wanted to be in South End,” Sarah Brigham told Charlotte magazine in 2013. She added: “We really love this city and the dynamic craft beer scene it has already, and we’re enthusiastic to become part of it.”
That enthusiasm appears not to have lasted long, and the fallout from Justin Brigham’s arrest threatens to strangle whatever success Sycamore built. Even before last week, Sycamore was hardly the first choice for many Charlotte beer patrons.
“I like more laid-back places,” a 50-year-old man who identified himself only as Jason told me Wednesday evening at Lower Left Brewing in LoSo. Lower Left, which opened in 2019, is housed in a former mechanic’s shop on Nations Crossing Road. It’s a classic craft brewery — a small operation renowned for its award-winning beers. While Sycamore produced 30,285 barrels in 2024, tops in Charlotte and second-most in the state, Lower Left produced 331.
Jason said he used to stop occasionally at Sycamore’s original taproom, but only if he happened to be in the area. He referred to the still-open brewery in the past tense. “If you weren’t a 25-year-old who had just moved to South End and started working at a bank, it wasn’t for you,” he said. “Their beer was average at best. They just never made anything that made me want to go back and drink it.”
I’d heard sentiments like that expressed before. I covered the local beer scene for Charlotte magazine for about five years until the magazine ceased publication this month. Over that time, I heard numerous whispers and stray comments from brewery owners and employees: Sycamore’s ownership didn’t care much about being part of the local brewing community.
It was obvious that Sycamore catered to the younger, apartment-dwelling crowd in South End. Especially on sunny days in spring and fall, Sycamore patrons seemed to view the expansive property as a cornhole-happy extension of the Charlotte Rail Trail, a popular paved walkway that runs parallel to the light rail line and right past the brewery.
As a business practice, the approach worked spectacularly. In May 2023, Sycamore moved into a new, 21,000 sq. ft. space. It’s the anchor of the 16-story The Line development next to the original taproom property, which the brewery had bought for $2.6M in 2015 and sold for $9M in 2019. The updated Sycamore included an expanded food and drink menu, plus a turf-covered rooftop beer garden with play areas for children and dogs.
The new development enhanced the perception of Sycamore as a brewery concerned mainly with business growth. Its beer did, too. In the four years of the Charlotte Independent Brewers Alliance’s annual CLT Brewed Awards, which awards gold, silver, and bronze “medals” to area breweries in 10 beer categories, Sycamore won only two, and for the same beer: Its Super Quench wheat ale with citrus won bronze in the wheat beer category in 2024 and again this year.
But after Justin Brigham’s arrest in Stanly County last week on charges of burglary and statutory rape — and additional felony charges, including an assault in which he’s accused of grabbing and twisting a man’s genitals — the criticisms and shortcomings tasted different. The brewery’s notoriously risqué holiday beer can labels, once seen as cheeky and fun, suddenly seemed offensive.
Most of the longtime brewery owners I reached out to this week either didn’t respond or declined to comment. One, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, referred to a statement issued Monday by the NC Craft Brewers Guild, which represents about 300 breweries throughout the state.
“Sycamore Brewing has not been a member of our Guild, and has maintained only minimal engagement with our craft beer community at large,” the statement said. Lisa Parker, the organization’s executive director, declined to comment further. Also, the Brewers Alliance (CIBA), which represents about 50 Charlotte-area breweries, announced Tuesday that its board had voted to suspend Sycamore from CIBA membership because of the charges.
Neither reaction surprised the brewery owner I spoke with. “You’re going to be very hard-pressed to find any local, regional or state brewery that has any support for Sycamore,” he said. “They’ve always been very elitist, very proud — no one’s been prouder of their success than them.”
Greg Lacour is a journalist in Charlotte.
Related Ledger articles:
“The rapid fall of Sycamore Brewing” (Dec. 17)
“S.C. beer distributor cuts off Sycamore, citing ‘despicable actions’ of ‘vile’ brewery co-founder” (Dec. 19)
Arts critic Lawrence Toppman walked into the Gantt Center this week and found himself traveling an emotional arc — from fury to joy to a lingering sense of calm. Moving through three very different exhibits, he discovered how painting, photography and ritual can stir the spirit, engage the mind and leave you smiling on the way out.
From his review of three Gantt Center exhibitions published Friday in The Ledger’s Toppman on the Arts newsletter:
There’s dancing at the other end of the third floor, too, in the exhibit “Jazz Greats: Classic Photographs from the Bank of America Collection.” These photos capture impeccably dressed swing dancers in states of ecstasy at clubs or house parties and depict singers and instrumentalists in action and repose. (Or both at once, in the case of trumpeter Miles Davis.)
Irrepressible Dizzy Gillespie shows up in three photos: He executes a step on Manhattan’s famously jazzy 52nd Street, adores the scatting Ella Fitzgerald and puffs his cheeks to display his unique embouchure to French children. Yet the star of the exhibit is photographer Chuck Stewart, whose work adorned a reported 2,000 albums and magazine articles. He took the most touching shot here, one of saxophonist Eric Dolphy gazing in 1964 toward a future he would never know; Dolphy died on tour in a diabetic coma a few months later.
For all the excitement of seeing a perspiring Billie Holiday woo an audience, I most enjoyed photos of artists at peace: John Coltrane meditatively cradling his sax, pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams lost in thought. The exhibit has three Carolinas connections: Coltrane comes from Hamlet, N.C., Gillespie from Cheraw, S.C., and Williams taught at Duke University. (We could’ve had all of the Big Five, had Tryon’s Nina Simone and Rocky Mount’s Thelonious Monk been there.)
As you amble, listen carefully to the soundtrack, which goes back to big band music and forward to bop. I was leaving when I heard the opening of Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” and had to stay another 10 minutes; I never get off a ‘Trane until it comes to a complete stop.
The exhibitions run into 2026.
Read Toppman on Gantt exhibits
🎭 Sign up for The Ledger’s Toppman on the Arts newsletter on your account settings page to receive Toppman’s full reviews straight to your inbox.
If you’re hitting the road for the holidays, have a great time.
But if you’re here, you might benefit from this collection of helpful holiday-centric lists from a variety of sources:
🍗 Where to order a fully cooked Christmas dinner (Charlotte on the Cheap)
🎬 12 offbeat holiday movies, recommended by Ledger critic Lawrence Toppman (🎧 also a podcast)
❄️ The best Hallmark Christmas movies, ranked (Variety)
🎄 Holiday event listings — things to do this weekend (Axios Charlotte)
💵 Readers’ picks: favorite local charities — for those end-of-the-year charitable contributions (Ledger)
🥳 Things to do New Year’s Eve (Axios Charlotte)
PHOTO CONTEST: The deadline is Monday (Dec. 22) for you to submit your original photos of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County — with a chance to win prizes (and minor fame) from The Charlotte Ledger and The Election Hub.
➡️ Details and entry form here.
Looking for a meaningful local gift this holiday season? Or a stocking stuffer?
A subscription to The Charlotte Ledger is a smart way to keep someone connected to what’s really happening in Charlotte — from development and business to the arts, transit, local government … and more!
And here’s a bonus: an annual Ledger membership comes with a second email subscription, so you can share the access with a spouse, friend or family member at no extra cost. You can schedule the email notifying the gift recipient on Dec. 25 or any other day you choose.
Local news and insights from a trusted source make a great gift — one that lasts all year!
➡️ 🎅 Give a Charlotte Ledger subscription
The rapid fall of Sycamore Brewing: Sycamore dominated Charlotte’s beer scene. Now it’s fighting to survive.
A plan for apartments at The Pearl: Details emerge after scrutiny of affordable housing at medical innovation district
Southeast Psych closes after 25 years: The psychology practice closed its last Charlotte office in SouthPark in late November
Office tower plan filed for South End: In a market that’s seen so little new office construction, it’s notable that a developer is filing plans for a new tower
Catholic friars take faith to Charlotte’s bar scene: In unexpected places, the priests say people are searching for meaning
Need to sign up for this e-newsletter? We offer a free version, as well as paid memberships for full access to all 6 of our local newsletters:
The Charlotte Ledger is a locally owned media company that delivers smart and essential news. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.
◼️ About The Ledger • Our Team • Website
◼️ Newsletters • Podcast • Newcomer Guide • A Better You email series
◼️ Subscribe • Sponsor • Events Board • Merch Store • Manage Your Account
◼️ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn