VIDEO: Lagunitas Discusses Newest Beer, Brewery Expansion

LagunitasPETALUMA, CA – Northern California-based, Lagunitas Brewing Company began construction this month on an expansion that is estimated to cost $10 million.

The brewery will be expanding into a 250-barrel brew system that will allow for production up to 660,000 barrels annually.

“We are going to keep our 80-barrel system so we will still be able to make smaller batches,” said Director of Marketing, Ron Lindenbusch.”The new system will hopefully take us the next 10 or 15 years.”

Lagunitas Brewing is currently up over 50-percent this year and on pace to produce 160,000 barrels of beer in 2011.

“We are in 32 states and we have been slowly expanding over the last 8 or 9 years,” said Lindenbusch. “National growth is strong, but still half of our growth is coming from Northern California.”

The brewery is also releasing a brand new beer, a Bavarian-Styled Doppel Weizen. The label copy is printed below.

“In far-away 2006, in a beer hall in Philly, at the end of a long road, we shared our first beer with a Friestat Bayern Brewer enharmonically named Wolfgang. At stake, over a Prima Pils, was whether or not Lagunitas would purchase from him a new 80bbl brewhouse. It was a lot of money. Playing Silenus to my Brewery’s chariot, together- with the benefit of the Pils- we forded the emotional-economic crevasse and commissioned the brewhouse. Unforseeable at the time would be the need for even more brewing capacity today in extra-local 2011. So, for the sixth time in our short history, we lurch down that increasingly familiar road towards a new 250 barrel brewhouse. The actual installation, beginning in November, will bear a stong resemblance to a heart transplant, on an awake patient, performed on the backside of a galloping horse, or at very least in tow behind Dionysus’ trustworthy Silenus. Some is good, more is better. The good new is; it’s still us.”