E-Malt.com News article: USA, OH: Columbus Brewing Co. to expand production capacity with new location

The former Hill Distributing Co. warehouse will become Columbus Brewing Co.’s third home since its founding in 1988, The Columbus Dispatch reported on September, 5.

Eric Bean can’t make another drop of India pale ale at his 6,000-square-foot brewery on Short Street.

“We are not only at the boundary of our current tank capacity,” said Bean, the owner of Columbus Brewing Co. “We can’t squeeze another tank in.”

So Bean bought a big, empty building on the West Side.

The 50,000-square-foot facility will allow room for serious growth at Columbus’ largest craft brewer. Columbus Brewing Co. will make about 12,000 barrels of beer this year, Bean said, and the first phase of the new brewery will crank out 20,000 to 25,000 barrels with plenty of space to expand.

“This is going to let us dream big,” Bean said.

Big is what Ohio’s craft beer industry has become. The state will have 100 craft breweries by year’s end, according to Mary MacDonald, executive director of the Ohio Craft Brewers Association.

“There were 58 in 2012,” MacDonald said. “The whole industry has shown enormous growth.”

Columbus Brewing Co. is the state’s third-largest craft brewer behind the Boston Beer Co.’s regional brewery in Cincinnati and Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Co.

“There are plenty of more places looking to expand,” MacDonald said.

Brewery expansion has been ongoing nationally, said Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association.

Craft-beer makers have added an average of 11 percent to their capacity each year for the past decade.

Columbus Brewing plans to invest $5 mln in the project, including the cost of the building, renovations and brewing equipment.

The building lacks floor drains and proper plumbing for a brewery, Beans said, and those items represent the bulk of the renovations needed. The building is familiar for Columbus Brewing Co. Hill was its first distributor, Bean said.

“It’s cool to keep the building in the beer business,” Bean said.

As for his current space on Short Street, Bean hopes to keep that in the beer business as well, but he declined to reveal any plans.

Renovations on the new brewery will begin soon, and new equipment should arrive early next year. Bean hopes to have the brewery up and running by late spring or early summer.

The popularity of Columbus’ India pale ale, which accounts for more than 60 percent of sales, has pushed out many of the other varieties Bean wants to brew. Columbus simply can’t meet IPA demand and make much else.

“We’ve had to cut off seasonal production,” Bean said, adding that he stopped making this year’s summer seasonal in mid-May. “It’s a problem, but it certainly isn’t a bad problem.”

It’s a common issue, Watson said.

“A lot of the stories we hear are similar to Columbus Brewing,” Watson said. “One, or multiple, beers take off, and suddenly a brewer can’t keep up with supply and has to stop production of other beers.”

Columbus Brewing distributes its suds in an area that includes central Ohio up through the northeastern part of the state. Bean wants to expand across the rest of Ohio, but he doesn’t have that mapped out yet.

“We have no plans to go national,” Bean said, but the new building will allow for that sort of expansion down the road. “When we outgrow this building, we will be in a different league.”


10 September, 2014