E-Malt.com News article: USA, SC: Commonhouse Aleworks to finish building its brewery in North Charleston this fall

Six months after Palmetto Brewing Co. announced plans to move to Park Circle, an upstart brewery says it might beat the local beer titan to the punch, the Charleston Post Courier reported.

Commonhouse Aleworks - a company cooked up by two local home brewers - says it will finish construction this fall on a new O’Hear Avenue brewery in what would be a first for the hip North Charleston neighborhood.

Co-founders Hank Hanna and Pearce Fleming say they will break ground in the next few weeks on a 7,200-square-foot brewery and tap house two blocks north of the business district on East Montague Avenue. Commonhouse bought the land for the new building on Friday, but financial terms were not immediately available.

Hanna and Fleming have been working on plans for the brewery for a year and a half, and the two have established themselves quickly in the local craft industry after taking up home brewing on a whim a few years ago.

Under the moniker Octohops Homebrew, the two competed in the Great American Beer Festival last year in a partnership with Charleston’s Revelry Brewing Co. Their Hefeweizen style wheat beer, Wise One, ultimately made it to the final judging table.

The new venture will enter a craft industry that’s expanded quickly around Charleston and across South Carolina. The state had 36 craft breweries in 2015, more than doubling since 2011, according to the Brewers Association.

The trade group’s membership logs suggest that the growth hasn’t slowed down since: It now counts 76 craft breweries that are either operating or under development in South Carolina.

Fleming says there’s room for more expansion in the Lowcountry, especially for small brewers looking to pour pints for their neighbors. Commonhouse will have the capacity to produce 5,000 barrels, or 155,000 gallons, of beer annually, and its proprietors expect to sell most of it on site.

"What we're looking to add to the neighborhood is a communal gathering place through our tap house. That will be the primary place we're brewing our beer for," Fleming said. "We're hoping people will be able to ride bikes, walk, etc."

That’s a different approach than Commonhouse’s future neighbors, Palmetto Brewing, which Fleming expects will draw more customers from outside the neighborhood.

Palmetto - the state’s longest-operating brewery and one of its largest - is moving from Huger Street next year to a new facility a block up O’Hear Avenue. The brewery plans to expand its distribution across the Southeast and open a on-site restaurant.

"We think that our style will tend to be separated enough that people will want to check both places out," Hanna said. "We’re literally a stone’s throw from each other. So the proximity will be, I think, beneficial for us both."

Palmetto’s new brewery is part of a bigger effort to redevelop the former site of the General Asbestos and Rubber Co. - a long-vacant factory in an area that's transforming from its industrial roots.

The Beach Co. of Charleston is developing a mixed-use project called Garco Park that will eventually include more than 270 apartments and more commercial space on the 40-acre tract. Already, Adams Outdoor advertising has built a new office on the site.

Altogether, the new projects are helping to push Park Circle’s business district off the three-block stretch of East Montague that it’s built around now, said Jeff Baxter, a partner in the real estate firm Cityvovle.

"As more and more energy has built up around the East Montague district, this represents a shift a block north," said Baxter, whose firm sold the land to Commonhouse and is managing the brewery’s construction. "As East Montague has matured, the development is pushing off that to the north to fill out some of the blocks that have been vacant."


13 April, 2017