We're Expanding--Again--& It's Going To Be Rad

We’ve been in a near-constant state of growth since we opened our doors. Our capacity has grown fourfold through the regular arrival of new fermenters, packaging equipment, and other improvements. Most recently, the installation of dry and spent grain silos capped off our second major phase of growth.

And now we’re about to start another major phase of growth, to the extent that it even makes sense to talk about phases. With the help of the awesome lenders at Opus Bank, we'll be embarking on a major and concurrent set of projects that will once again change how this place looks, dramatically. If all goes to plan (ha!), here’s what we’re going to do:

Fermentation – Every time we’ve scaled up our production, demand has risen in tandem, and we’ve been right back to operating at max capacity. To buy ourselves a little wiggle room, we’re going bigger than ever in this next phase and installing four 240bbl fermenters and two 360bbl brite tanks. These six tanks will again double the capacity of the brewery, and the pad built to house them will eventually be home to four additional 240bbl fermenters. With all this new fermenting capacity, we’re excited to continue to put out the beers you guys love to drink as well as play around with recipes we’ve been dying to make for a while.

Packaging – We’ve had our eyes on the building next to the brewery for a while as our new packaging hall. Well, it’s finally going to happen and will include brand spankin’ new canning and bottling lines. These ungodly expensive new machines will improve the quality and consistency of our packaged beer, and also allow us to introduce some exciting new options. We’ll also be installing a centrifuge, that space-agey thingy making a bunch of noise on your other brewery tours that will help us get the most liquid out of each brew.

Barrels – If you’ve seen the barrel fort here at the brewery, it’s pretty impressive. But as alluded to in some our recent job postings, we’re going massively bigger with our barrel-aging program and will be moving the lion’s share of our barrels to a spiffy new space just blocks from the brewery. Here, our clean and funky barrels will age until they come home to the brewery for packaging. Eventually, this will allow us to release 4 times as much barrel-aged beer as we do today.

Storage – As we grow, so do the mountains of cans, bottles, hops, and grain stored around the brewery. Storage as a whole has already been pretty tight for a while now. We’ll be expanding both our cold and dry storage between a couple of properties snagged up around the brewery. We now have 30,000 total sq ft under lease, a massive increase over our initial 12,540 sq ft.

QC Laboratory – Finally, we’ll be taking the big step of building a purpose-built laboratory inside the brewery, where our lab folks will be running all kinds of regular quality control checks. From yeast health to can seam checks, we’re constantly making sure that every drop of beer that leaves the brewery is up to our rigid standards. This new lab will allow us to greatly expand the range and frequency of QC checks.

In future posts, we’ll talk about what all of these projects mean for you, the eager beer drinker, in greater detail. In the meantime, we’ll be sharing photos and stories from around here as these projects kick off in the next couple of months. And come see them for yourself – new space means new tasting room-only beers will be coming out more regularly. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Chris Sarette
Numbers Guru
Modern Times Beer