New Belgium Brewing’s Fort Collins expansion will take capacity to 920,000 bbls

The famed foeder forest at New Belgium’s brewhouse in Fort Collins. The new expansion will include 32 new oaken foeders (roughly translated as “giant oak barrel” in Dutch), used for wood beer conditioning.

We’ve been discussing New Belgium Brewing Co.’s future growth a lot lately, much of which will likely come from its upcoming Asheville, N.C., brewery, aimed at the East Coast market and beyond. The future 400,000-barrel (bbl) Asheville brewery and packaging facility will provide New Belgium with additional capacity allowing the Colorado-based brewer to expand into new areas of distribution. Upon completion in 2015, the facility will initially create 50 new jobs in the Asheville area with more than 100 positions expected at full build-out.

But before any of that happens, New Belgium is expanding its Fort Collins, Colo., brewing base first. Yesterday, the company announced it was nearing completion on a 140,000-bbl expansion project at its Fort Collins brewery to accommodate growth while building that second facility in Asheville. Overall, the Fort Collins brewhouse will have a 920,000-bbls capacity. Added features include: 400 metric tons of additional malt capacity; four 2,200-hectoliter (hl) bright beer tanks; 12 2,200-hl fermentation vessels; a 30 percent expansion to the process water treatment facility; additional filtration capacity; and 32 new oaken foeders for wood beer conditioning. The expansion is designed to meet demand through 2015 when New Belgium’s Asheville facility is slated to come online.

“This gives us the ability to grow brands in existing markets while adding additional territories through 2015,” said New Belgium Brewing Sales Director Joe Menetre. “We’ll be in 31 states plus D.C. this summer, so we’ve got a lot of potential geography out there still. We’re excited about opening the Asheville brewery and this will get us there while meeting demand.”

New Belgium is currently deconstructing existing buildings at the Asheville site and will break ground this summer. The Asheville brewery will begin beer production in 2015 with a capacity (as mentioned) of 400,000 bbls.