US, CO: Beer production booming in Fort Collins

Fort Collins microbreweries will produce enough beer this year to fill 35 Olympic-size swimming pools, Coloradoan.com reported on June, 29.

There is no question that in recent years Fort Collins, often touted as the Napa Valley of beer, has added more breweries.

Since 2010, four new breweries have launched here, but in that time current breweries including Odell Brewing Co. and New Belgium Brewing Co. continued to expand production from 476,487 barrels or 14.77 million gallons in 2006, to 749,620 barrels or 23.23 million gallons this year. That is excluding Anheuser-Busch Inc. which can produce 10 million barrels a year on its own.

More than 20 years ago, when Odell Brewing Co. owner, Doug Odell, started brewing beer commercially the concept of craft beer was foreign to many beer drinkers.

"The first three years after we started there was no way to support all these breweries today because people did not know what craft beer was," Odell said. "Our biggest competition was lack of knowledge by the beer consumer."

That problem is virtually gone today because there are entire festivals, tours and publications dedicated to nothing but craft beer. And as a result, Fort Collins' micro brewing industry has exploded.

But that growth has not just been limited to the new breweries offering new select styles of beers. Existing breweries like Odell have continued to expand leading to a dramatic increase in the amount of beer brewed in Fort Collins.

On June 22, Odell added the first of two 200-barrel fermentation tanks at its brewery. Both tanks have a 6,200-gallon capacity. Odell currently produces about 57,000 barrels annually compared to 33,000 barrels in 2006.

"Now, a lot of people know beer, and Fort Collins is becoming more and more known as a beer Mecca and it can support these smaller operations like Pateros Creek, Equinox and Funkwerks," Odell said.

The biggest producer on the block, excluding Anheuser-Busch Inc., is New Belgium Brewing Co. which produces 675,000 barrels annually and has the ability to brew 900,000 barrels.

01 July, 2011