CORRECTION: Yazoo Has NOT pulled out of Mississipi. Just not hitting any new markets there.
Yazoo Brewing (Nashville, TN) is potentially expanding. The current 10 man brewing operation has seen 50% growth in the past year. Riding high on Continue Reading →
Founders Brewing just received approval to add 4,000 feet to the brewery in Grand Rapids, MI. The extra space will give Founders more brewing room, but will not be expanding the tap room. <MLive>
New Belgium Brewing (Ft, Collins, CO) is expanding. New plans have been submitted to the city to develop a 5 acre piece of land that New Belgium owns. The new build will include a 16,500 square foot space across 2 Continue Reading →
Surly Brewing fans rejoice. Today is a good day. Beer legislation is working in your favor. In their 5th year, Surly has been planning a $20 million dollar “destination brewery.” This issue was Minnesota laws prevented the dream from being Continue Reading →
Stone Brewing is working on a European project. The plan is to build a brewery SOMEWHERE in Europe. A few weeks ago, Stone asked their fans what they want to know about the project. Today, they answered them on the Stone Blog:
A little while back we asked you via Facebook if you had any questions for us about our European brewery project. From the fusillade of responses, we have deemed the following to be worthy of answers. If you’ve got a burning query we didn’t cover here, feel free to ask in the comments.
CORRECTION: Yazoo Has NOT pulled out of Mississipi. Just not hitting any new markets there.
Yazoo Brewing (Nashville, TN) is potentially expanding. The current 10 man brewing operation has seen 50% growth in the past year. Riding high on this growth, is expansion possible? Linus Hall says maybe. Apparently the brewery had to slow distribution expansion in Mississipi (an unfortunately dry desert for good beer already) to keep up with demand in the southeast.
Yazoo brewmaster Linus Hall said on Nashville Public Radio:
“We want to see if this growth is sustainable. We’re contemplating putting a lot of money into expansion and more capacity and if all the sudden the market falls off our cools off, we’ll be stuck with a lot of equipment we can’t use.”
Atlanta is a big and expanding beer market. It’s save to say that a brewery expansion would be needed to not only keep up with demand, but reach new markets. Stay postive. <NashvillePublicRadio>
Founders Brewing just received approval to add 4,000 feet to the brewery in Grand Rapids, MI. The extra space will give Founders more brewing room, but will not be expanding the tap room. <MLive>
Also, the first of the brewery’s 750ml bottles are rolling off the line. Blushing Monk is the first of the new “Backstage Series.” Monk is a Belgian style fruit beer fermented with pure raspberries. (Previously brewed half a decade ago under the name Imperial Belgian Razz.)
Availability: 750ml bottles Arrival: Released in Summer, 2011
New Belgium Brewing (Ft, Collins, CO) is expanding. New plans have been submitted to the city to develop a 5 acre piece of land that New Belgium owns. The new build will include a 16,500 square foot space across 2 buildings for offices, meeting rooms, and living spaces. The living spaces dubbed “casitas” will be for “Beer Rangers” and other brewery employees that visit Ft. Collins. There are around 100 people that currently travel the states in the name of New Belgium.
This expansion has no impact on New Belgium’s brewing capacity. This is an opportunity to spread out a little bit, have more meeting rooms, and event space. NB still has 10 more acres of undeveloped land in their possession. <Coloradoan>
Surly Brewing fans rejoice. Today is a good day. Beer legislation is working in your favor. In their 5th year, Surly has been planning a $20 million dollar “destination brewery.” This issue was Minnesota laws prevented the dream from being realized. The biggest issue was the prevention of being able to sell pints of beer at the brewery.
The Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association a liquor lobby, was standing in opposition of Surly’s plans. The brewery hired lobbyists & fought back on behalf of the “Surly Nation” and won. The law has been softened to allow breweries producing less that 250,000 barrels a year to be excluded from current regulations.
The new destination brewery will have a beer garden with rooftop terrance, restaurant & bar. Location TBD. <StarTribune>
Arrogant Bastards At Stone Brewing Announce Expansion
Stone Brewing is growing. To the tune of 26 million dollars. In addition to expanding the brewery, Stone is planning a few other additions too.
Expansions Include:
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400 seat restaurant in Point Loma, CA. Including 19,000 ft beer garden w/ brewery, outdoor screening venue, & bocce ball
The brewery in Escondido will be doubled. Maxing capacity at 500,000 barrels a year
Adding a 18 acre farm in North County, CA to supply organic food to the restaurant
San Diego based shop for bottles & growler sales
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Also, this is in addition to the Stone Brewing – Europe venture, which is still in progress. Stone is planning on building in Germany or Belgium in the near future. When this expansion is completed in 2012, it will boost Stone’s output from 150,000 barrels to 500,000. 250 more jobs are set to be created.
Stone’s annual revenue is in the neighborhood of $62 million per year <SignOnSanDiego>
Stone Brewing is working on a European project. The plan is to build a brewery SOMEWHERE in Europe. A few weeks ago, Stone asked their fans what they want to know about the project. Today, they answered them on the Stone Blog:
A little while back we asked you via Facebook if you had any questions for us about our European brewery project. From the fusillade of responses, we have deemed the following to be worthy of answers. If you’ve got a burning query we didn’t cover here, feel free to ask in the comments.
Q: Are you going to use European ingredients?
A: Yes, undoubtedly, although we’ll probably import some American hops. Fortunately, you get a lot of bang for your buck with hops; they’re compact, lightweight, and pungent. So it shouldn’t add up to much in the grand scheme of things…even with the copious amounts we love to use.
Q: Are you going to explore new styles of beer or keep the same style that Stone is known for?
A: We will continue making Stone-style Stone beers. As in, we will certainly make new beers, but they will always keep with our approach to brewing. We will look for inventive ways to incorporate local ingredients, riff on regional styles, and generally exercise our creativity in the brewing process, but our beer will still be recognizably Stone.
Q: Why Europe and not [my hometown]? We’d love a brewery/your beer here!
A: Undoubtedly you would, and we are in fact rolling out distribution in new areas at a rate of approximately 2 states per year. That’s the fastest we can sustainably enter new markets. So if you can’t get Stone right now, hang tight, we’re on our way.
As for building a brewery in Europe rather than somewhere else in the U.S., keep in mind that the primary goal of this project is to build a production brewery. No amount of capacity will make it any cheaper, more environmentally sustainable, or freshness-preserving to ship beer across an ocean. So there’s a basic logistical reason for the choice.
More abstractly, we believe Europe is in the early stages of a brewing revolution. The forces of consolidation and homogenization have wrecked havoc on the noble European brewing tradition in much the same way things got so desperate in the U.S. prior to the craft beer revolution (admittedly, things aren’t as bad as the low point of 45 or so breweries in all of the US that we had in the late 1970’s). A smattering of small, highly creative European breweries are challenging the dominance of fizzy yellow beer, and we want to be a part of their movement.
Q: Can I get a job at your European brouwerij?
A: Maybe, if you’re amazing at what you do (and speak several European languages.)
Q: Will you make brews available only in Europe?
A: Pretty much. We believe it’s important to support the struggling postal system by forcing American beer geeks to trade European beer geeks for our Euro-only beers.
In all seriousness, yes of course there will be Europe-only beers. The whole point is to avoid shipping all that glass and liquid across the world. Consider it an excuse to engage in beer tourism. That being said, we’ll probably ship the odd keg or case back and forth a little for special occasions, but it’ll likely be a rather insignificant percentage of our total production.
Q: Will your beers abide by the Reinheitsgebot?
A: First, some clarification. The Reinheitsgebot stopped being part of German law in 1988, so we’re certainly under no obligation to comply with it in the event we build our brewery or sell our beer in Germany. But backing up even farther, the Reinheitsgebot was essentially a labeling law; you could still make beer with just about anything you wanted, you just couldn’t label it “beer.”
That said, most of our year-round beers are Reinheitsgebot “compliant,” while many of our special releases are not.
Q: Do you think Europe is really ready?
A: “Europe” as a whole is not ready, and neither was the U.S. in 1996 when Stone was founded. But our goal isn’t to make beer for everyone; it’s to make beer for the people who share our incredibly good taste in beer. So we’re neither concerned nor interested in whether an entire continent’s worth of people are ready for our beer. But we do know that there are Europeans who are excited about breaking the hegemony of fizzy yellow beer by supporting innovative brewers. And that’s enough for us.
Shipyard Brewing (Portland, ME) is expanding. The brewery is undergoing a $1 million dollar expansion, adding more capacity & employees.
The Expansion By The Numbers:
– Capacity will add 40,000 barrel capacity (To 180,00 barrels)
– That’s an addition of just over 1.2 million gallons of beer (5.5 million gals annually)
– 3 fermentation tanks to be added (2/300 barrel capacity, 1/100 barrel)
– Additional grain silo
– Expansion adds an additional turn. Shipyard will be able to brew 5 times a day.
– Expansion adds 5 employees
