E-Malt.com News article: USA, DE: Dogfish brewery to increase its beer production

Construction is progressing with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s $52 mln expansion, and the brewers hope production will start next month, delawareonline.com reported on June, 12.

Dogfish brewery is expecting to produce 200,000 barrels of beer this year, the equivalent of about 2.8 mln cases. The expansion will enable capacity of 500,000 barrels annually; a level co owner Nick Benz said should be reached in 2020.

The 28,000-square-foot addition will provide space for a 200-barrel brew house able to produce 10 batches of beer in 24 hours. It will complement the existing 100-barrel brew house that can make eight batches in a day.

Dogfish founder and President Sam Calagione said the brewery, which is in its 15th straight year of double-digit growth, needed to invest to expand capacity in meeting future demands.

“For the sake of the beer drinkers that love our beer, and equally for the sake of my co-workers who want opportunities to grow with the company ... we felt the need to keep investing and stay in front of our capacity constraints so we could offer more opportunity at the same time we’re offering more beer lovers more Dogfish Head beer,” he said.

Benz said the addition enables the brewery to recuperate the lost time.

“It will be amazing to have true control over our own production process instead of always having to run with your foot flat out on the floor,” he added. “That will be awesome, to have a throttle for the first time in our business.”

The vessels were delivered and installed at the new brew house and Benz said that the company must use the vessels to brew 10 batches of 90 Minute Imperial IPA within 24 hours under Dogfish standards and specifications.

To make space for the new brew house, a humidity-controlled room was created specifically for its three oak and one Palo Santo wood tanks.

A second Palo Santo tank is waiting in the wings, and there will be room for one additional tank down the road.

“Wood should be kept like a cigar, in a humidor,” Benz said.

“You want to keep them at a proper humidity and proper temperature, so we put the wood tanks in a room where they’re going to do really well,” he explained.

Also included in the expansion is an 88,000-square-foot warehouse for the brewery’s new bottling line and packaging area. Construction of that building has been completed.

Among the equipment is a $10 mln Krones bottling line, which will feature a machine that can fill beer bottles at a rate of 650 a minute. The old line’s rate is 240 bottles a minute.

Benz said he expects the warehouse to be operational in mid-July.


14 June, 2013