If you follow New Belgium Asheville on Instagram, or even on Twitter, you might have already seen some of their photos of the construction site. If not, here’s the scoop in a nutshell: After a lot of foundation work, things have started to go vertical.
At the Craven Street location, where about 500,000 barrels per year will be brewed at full build-out, walls are starting to go up on the packaging hall. This is where the team will keg, bottle and can the beer. The groundwork is also being laid for the nine malt silos, which will eventually hold the malt needed for brewing. The cellar deck is in the process of being poured, and that might be the most impressive looking piece. The pod-like structure requires 600 yards of concrete in preparation for fermentation vessels according to New Belgium Pollinator Susanne Hackett.
The distribution center in Enka-Candler is coming together even more quickly. Hackett says in the past few weeks the concrete walls have been erected and roofing steel is already on site. Unlike the brewery, the distribution center should be complete in the spring of 2015, and New Belgium is looking into using it to service East Coast accounts prior to the Asheville brewery coming online in late 2015.
New Belgium plans on giving Xpress and end-of-year update, but for now Hackett reminds readers that beer will be brewed at the Craven Street site in late 2015 and the bulk of the hiring process will start in early 2015.
