Lost Mined Brewing to close in Shamokin after community farewell

Lost Mined Brewing Company & Restaurant poured its final beers on Sunday, June 28, after a farewell week built around discounted tap beer, discounted food and a last open mic and karaoke night with Ed Krepps in downtown Shamokin. The goodbye at 100 South Market Street was staged as a community sendoff, not a quiet shutdown, with the brewery’s windows showing for-sale signs as the doors closed on nearly eight years in business.

Co-owner Dennis Kaleta said the decision came down to the economic climate and the fact that he and his business partner were retiring. That combination made it harder to keep a family restaurant and craft brewery running at the same time, especially in a secondary market where every lunch rush, taproom night and event booking matters. In a town like Shamokin, losing one taproom can also mean losing one of the few regular gathering places in the weekly calendar.

Lost Mined had built that role deliberately. Its own history says the brewery began as a home-brewing hobby on a kitchen stove, then moved into a backyard brew shed before becoming a commercial operation. The brewery also said it was Shamokin’s first commercial brewery in more than 46 years, a marker that gave the business a place in the town’s modern beer story before it ever filled its first pint glass. Third-party listings described a tap list of about 30 unique brews, along with live music and open-mic style programming that helped make the space feel like more than a restaurant.

The shutdown also leaves a commercial footprint behind. Real estate listings described the property at 100 South Market Street as a turnkey restaurant and brewery with brewing equipment and a liquor license, and Brewers in PA said the real estate and operational assets were being offered for sale as part of the closure. That means the end of service is tied not just to retirement, but to what happens next in one of Downtown Shamokin’s visible storefronts.

Lost Mined’s exit lands in a rougher Pennsylvania beer market. Reporting in April said more than 65 breweries in the state had closed in the previous 24 months, and lawmakers in June advanced the Brews to Barns Act to give breweries tax relief for donating spent grain to agriculture. Against that backdrop, the last karaoke night at Lost Mined felt less like a finale than a snapshot of how fragile small-town brewery economics have become.