Lagunitas Brewery Upgrade (Updated)

Been a while since I posted, I’ve been enjoying a little 3 day weekend in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. But since you were so patient, I decided to bring you some news that might actually be interesting for a change. As usual, I’m going to tease you, so keep reading and you’ll get all the details.

Part of the process of writing this beer blog that I enjoy is sending unsolicited emails trying to talk to brewers, brewery reps, etc, in hopes that I can bring you some information. Well, I have been corresponding with the kind people from Lagunitas Brewing and they mentioned that your favorite brewery in Petaluma is getting a new 80 bbl brewhouse. No other details as of yet, but apparently the place is overrun with Germans armed with welding equipment.

Now I’m not sure what this means for production, but based on what I remember from my last tour of the brewery and the pictures to the left (Brimstone Brewing Co., 80 bbl fermentor is the big one, 2nd from left), I’m guessing they are removing some of the headache from the brewing process. Last time I was there, they said it took three batches to fill a fermenter, which resembled those in the pics. So, 80 bbl brewhouse, 80 bbl fermentors, one batch per fermentor, seems to make sense to me. I’ll see what else I can find out, but there you go, fresh hot boiling wort, and now more of it.

Update: Found this press release on Beer Advocate

Dateline… Petaluma, Calif… April 20, 2007

Greetings…

We don’t often do “press releases” but our current project is fun enough and cool enough that we thought we’d brag a little about it…

We just completed financing for- and the specification and ordering of- a fabulous and shiny new 80 barrel/10 brews per day state-of-the-art German-built Rolec Brewhouse.

This completes the $4,420,000 fundamental ‘re-building in-place’ of our entire brewery increasing our ultimate capacity to well over 150,000 barrels.

In January of 2006 we installed a complete and shiny new BC/Sympac Bottling Line and in January of this year revealed a groovy new Alfa Laval High-Speed Centrifuge Filtration system.

While this was happening we took delivery of 4 new 300 barrel Fermentation Tanks and one new 300 barrel Bottling Tank. We upgraded our Keg Cleaning and Racking Line, 2,500 new Beer Kegs and we even improved the lighting in the Brewery!

The Brewery was founded in 1993 and has consistently been one of the fastest growing breweries in the U.S. In 2006 we shipped 37,420 barrels of our finest; showing an 18% growth over 2005- and 2007 is off to a crazy cool 30% increase over 2006’s start.

All this has been supported by a successful expansion into 11 new states in 2006 with more in the grist case for 2007.

Please call me if you have any questions…

Cheers,

Ron Lindenbusch
Beer Weasel
Lagunitas Brewing Co.

So there you have it. Not much else to this story until I make it to the brewery myself after completion.