Old Cap ESB Is a Tribute to a 75-Year-Old Grocery Store

Confluence built a tribute beer for John's Grocery, the Iowa City shop the brewery calls a 75-year fixture. The style it reached for to say permanence is an English ESB, which is either unfashionable or exactly the point.

• Style: English Style ESB Ale
• Release Date: 2026-09-04
• ABV: 5.8%
• Confluence Brewing Company (Des Moines, IA)

Breweries name tribute beers after founders, after anniversaries, and after the occasional beloved dog. Confluence Brewing Company has named one after a grocery store.

Old Cap ESB reached the Des Moines taproom on Friday, September 4, an English-style extra special bitter at 5.8 percent. The brewery made it in partnership with John's Grocery in Iowa City, which it describes as a 75-year fixture of that city.

The pairing makes more sense on a second look. John's is not a supermarket. It is a long-running independent beer, wine and spirits shop on East Market Street, the kind of place that was stocking Iowa beer well before there was a great deal of Iowa beer to stock. A brewery and a bottle shop marking a milestone together is less a marketing exercise than a professional courtesy.

Confluence puts the framing plainly.

Some things last because they matter.

The brewery's note calls John's a gathering place and a cornerstone of community, "a reminder that small independent businesses can outlast the tides of time," and says Confluence hopes to stay a staple of Des Moines for as long.

The style choice carries some of that argument on its own. ESB is an English pub beer built on malt balance rather than hop volume, and it has spent the last two decades well outside the spotlight in an American market organized around haze and fruit. Choosing it for a beer about durability is a quieter statement than choosing something louder would have been.

Confluence describes the result as an approachable blend of toasty, caramel malts, a touch of earthy and floral hops, and subtle fruity esters. The can art matches the register: cream and gold deco lettering on a dark brown field, with a row of buildings and a cupola running along the bottom edge.

Old Cap ESB is pouring in the taproom and available in four-packs to go. Distribution across Iowa began Monday, September 7.