06/04/2026
Before the Brewery, There Was a Hangar.
Live music is now part of the room, seven nights a week.
Before Hangar 24 was a brewery, it was a real hangar at the Redlands Municipal Airport, and it belonged to our friend Kit Palmer. That is where the whole thing started.
On good days, friends would show up with no real agenda. If someone had never been in a small airplane, we would find them a seat. We would fly low and slow over Southern California, let people see the world from a few thousand feet up, and come back as the sun started dropping toward the Pacific. Then the airplanes would get pushed away, the barbecues would come out, and someone would find a picnic bench or unfold a chair.
I was still attending Cal State San Bernardino then, and I would bring whatever homebrew I was working on. Our friend Bruce McGinnis would bring a guitar. People would sing John Denver, country songs, old rock songs, folk songs, and the kind of songs everybody somehow knows by the second chorus.
There was no stage. No format. No brand strategy. Just airplanes cooling in the hangar, smoke from the grill, a glass in your hand, music in the room, and people who were glad to be there.
That is the spirit Hangar 24 was built to carry. Beer mattered. Food mattered. Flying mattered. Music mattered. But the point was people, and that is still the point.
That spirit is what we are leaning into now, with more reasons to gather and more nights worth staying for.
Live music, seven nights a week. A second band on Friday and Saturday nights. Extended hours on Friday and Saturday, open until 12am.
Country and Americana will sit at the center of it, because the best of country music tells the truth about ordinary life. It sings about work, family, faith, loss, friendship, heartbreak, humor, Saturday night, Sunday morning, stubborn hope, and the people who keep showing up anyway. That fits the craft. It fits the table. It fits the joy of a room that remembers this is the good part.
Country is the center, not the fence. Around it you will hear Southern rock, roots rock, classic rock, and folk, and on the right night you will still catch the other sounds that have always found a home here. Even the best country artists do not stay inside one box, and neither will we. To every musician who has made these rooms feel alive over the years, thank you. The sound is growing, and so is the gratitude.
The rhythm of the night matters too. During dinner, the music should lift the room while you talk, laugh, order another round, bring the kids, and hear the person across the table. Later on Friday and Saturday, we will turn the room up, with more energy and more reason to stay a little longer.
We are still a small business, and we are still learning. We will miss a note now and then. So keep walking with us. Tell us what is true. Give us grace. We will do our best to give the same back.
What we are building is simple. A brewery, a kitchen, a stage, and a table where people are welcomed, seen, fed, and reminded that life is better together. This is us becoming more fully Hangar 24, and the table is still open.
Thank you for caring enough to show up, speak up, and believe this place is worth having an opinion about. We will see you around the table.
Ben Cook and the Hangar 24 Team
Founder/Owner
