E-Malt.com News article: USA, WA: Seattle’s Pike Brewing Co. expands to brew more beer and add more capacity to its pub

Pike Brewing Co. says it will expand the space it occupies on downtown Seattle’s First Avenue by 25 percent so it can brew more beer, get more street visibility, and add more capacity to its pub, The Seattle Times reported on October 16.

The 5,500-square-foot expansion will enable beer production, currently at 12,500 barrels of beer a year, to increase by one quarter, said the brewery’s vice president of operations, Drew Gillespie.

The new space will replace a high atrium that currently looks out onto First Avenue and will house the restaurant, which is currently below ground level and lacks a street presence.

“That is a huge advantage. Many people don’t know where we are,” Gillespie said.

The brewery, founded in 1989 by Charles and Rose Ann Finkel, also announced it was expanding its roster of partners to add three long time employees: Gillespie, vice president controller Patti Baker and executive chef Gary Marx.

Adding the new partners responds to the founders’ desire for Pike Brewing to remain an independent company. “They realize it takes generations to make that happen,” Gillespie said.

The move comes after Elysian Brewing, another popular local brewery, was bought in January by giant Anheuser-Busch.

Separately, Tacoma-based Pacific Brewing & Malting Co. said it is buying the beer-making assets and pub of American Brewing Co., an Edmonds craft brewery that went public last year as a penny stock.

The purchase price was $750,000, according to regulatory filings. (That’s well below its market cap of $5.9 million, although trading in the company’s shares is thin.)

The breweries and tapdoors of both companies will coexist, a Pacific Brewing press release stated.

“It became clear that the demands of a publicly traded company were not well suited for a small local craft brewery,” said Neil Fallon, CEO of American Brewing, which will continue to brew the fermented tea drink kombucha. “For example, investors living all over the country cannot buy our beer in their local markets. This hinders the growth of the stock and frustrates shareholders.”


21 October, 2015