USA, NC: Catawba Valley Brewing opens a second brewery in Asheville

Scott and Billy Pyatt, co-owners of Catawba Valley Brewing, announced the location of their second brewery – Asheville North Carolina, mountainx.com reported on May, 27.

Billy Pyatt said, “I don’t think we’re going to have quite as many restrictions on what we can and can’t do [as if we were in the village], but we certainly want to build something that looks good and functions the way we want it to function.”

If all goes according to plan, the site will function in a few ways: It will be part brewery, part tasting room and part distribution centre.

The brewery will start off with a seven-barrel brewhouse, five fermentors and three brite tanks. In its early days, the Pyatts expect to produce about 750 to 1,000 barrels of beer per year. “What we make here is going to be geared towards the Asheville palate," Billly said.

On-site, there will be about a dozen taps, similar to Catawba’s main facility in Morganton. The majority will flow with Catawba beers, though there could be guest beers or collaborations from time to time.

The timing for all this depends largely on permits, but they’re ready to move fast. According to the Pyatts, they could complete all the site work in as little as two to three months. They hope to open by late summer.

As the number of breweries in Asheville grows, Catawba doesn’t want to get left behind in their own home market. “With the increase in breweries, a guy an hour away kind of gets to get lost in the shuffle; we don’t want that to happen," Billy says. "The city of Asheville has been good to us, and we hope
that we contributed some to this beer culture — and we want to be here a long time."

29 May, 2013