E-Malt.com News article: USA, CO: Dry Dock Brewing can’t satisfy growing demand

It’s been a little more than two weeks since the first cans rolled off the lines at Dry Dock Brewing’s new $4.5 mln production facility in Aurora, and owners Kevin and Michelle Delange already have a problem: They can’t manufacture the product quickly enough to satisfy demand, bizjournals.com reported on January, 31.

Such is life for the award-winning brewery that opened its first off-site production facility on January, 1 and plans to distribute to all areas of Colorado, except the southwest corner, by this summer.

The 30,000-square-foot facility will allow the 7-year-old brewery to package 60,000 cans a week.

Dry Dock contracted with Western Distributing to get its beer throughout the state, and the initial batches were focused on key liquor-store accounts that have sold hand-bottled and staff-delivered Dry Dock products for several years. But many of those accounts found their initial orders sold out within 48 hours and were demanding replacement beer quickly, Delange said.

“We have not been able to keep up. I underestimated the pent-up seven-year demand for our beer,” he said. “It’s been a good problem to have. But we need to make more.”

Dry Dock has a tasting room at its main brewery and Delange hopes to put a beer garden at the new facility as well. He also plans to eventually sell beer out of state to people that have asked for it. But that will have to wait for at least a little while, he said.

“We’ve been approached by distributors in about 15 states in the past year,” he said. “But we aren’t going to consider them until we have Colorado under control. So, that’s at least a year out.”


01 February, 2013