USA, NY: The Empire Brewing Company close to making beer at its new Farmstead Brewery in Cazenovia

The Empire Brewing Company is getting very close to making beer at its new Farmstead Brewery in Cazenovia, WSYR reported on January 19.

Internationally known tank maker Feldmeier, based in Syracuse is this week delivering the vessels Empire will use for its beer making process.

Ben Brotman, the head brewer for the Empire Farmstead Brewery, tells NewsChannel 9, "It’s very exciting. It seems like this is really happening and we're going to be making beer soon and that's what we want to do."

Also being delivered is bottling equipment.

Tim Butler, Empire’s Director of Brewing Operations, says, "We've never had the opportunity to bottle our beer before, for a long time it was only available at the brew pub, we are now doing some distribution in draft only but the opportunity to get our beer into bottles and get it in bigger stores and chain stores and convenience stores that's really going to be a huge stepping stone for us."

The entire brew house will contain the bottler and 19 vessels or tanks which would make it about 10 times the size of Empire’s small brewery in Armory Square in Syracuse.

"Some of the processes could change with a larger scale but overall it's the same basic idea," Brotman says.

Butler adds, "We have a select way that we're going to start doing thing and if we happen to expand on our techniques we'll do that as well. We are going to have a sour beer program that we've never had before."

The plan is to start making beer at the Farmstead Brewery by mid to late February.

Butler and Brotman expect the first bottles of Empire beer to be distributed sometime in April.

They have 9 different distributors spread across all of New York State.

20 January, 2016