E-Malt.com News article: USA, CO: Upslope Brewing to expand in Boulder

Boulder's Upslope Brewing Co. is expanding and opening a second brewery in its hometown, Dailycamera.com reported on July, 09.

The nearly 4-year-old Upslope leased a 12,000-square-foot space in the Flatiron Industrial Park in east Boulder. The brewery, which will include a taproom and a shared work-café with the neighboring Ozo Coffee Co., is expected to open by the first quarter of next year, said Henry Wood, Upslope's director of sales and marketing.

"It's an awesome part of town," he said. " ... It's a unique place in terms of its space. (We can) build a brewery without having to build a whole building."

When combined with Upslope's existing facility at 1501 Lee Hill Road, the new brewery will allow the craft brewer to up its initial production to 9,500 barrels per year, an increase of more than 70 percent from the expected production of 5,500 barrels this year, he said.

In 2010, Upslope produced 3,800 barrels of beer.

"Our No. 1 goal is just to try to meet the current demand that's out there in Colorado," he said.

Upslope, which was founded in 2008, only distributes within Colorado. The new brewery and the potential for expansion at the Flatiron office park could allow the canned brewer to break outside the state lines and - eventually - add to its line-up of four beers and its limited release series.

When the Flatiron Industrial Park brewery opens, Upslope officials intend to transition the Lee Hill brewery into a pilot facility where new beers are developed and tested. The taproom there will remain open.

"We feel like we're part of the community up here and we want to maintain that," he said.

Several Boulder County brewers recently have grown their facilities or embarked on expansion plans. Among those are: Twisted Pine Brewing, which is doubling the size of its Boulder brewery; Avery Brewing Co.'s development of a 96,000-square-foot brewery and restaurant in Gunbarrel and Left Hand Brewing Co.'s multimillion-dollar and multi-year efforts to bolster its Longmont facilities.

Nationally, the craft brewing industry remains on the rise, according to data compiled by the Brewers Association, the Boulder-based trade organization for craft brewers.

Last year, dollar and volume sales of craft beer increased by 15 percent and 13 percent, respectively, which allowed the $8.7 bln industry to capture a larger share of the market, according to the Brewers Association. Craft beer sales share last year was 9.1 percent by dollars and 5.7 percent by volume.


10 July, 2012