Newport Craft Brewery and Distillery in Rhode Island announced the purchase of a 6-acre plot of land from the city of Newport earlier this month, as part of a $10 million expansion project.
The land purchase will help facilitate a planned 20,000 sq. ft. expansion of the company’s manufacturing space, as well as taproom and event spaces.
In 2008, the brewery and distillery (then known as Newport Storm) moved from Middletown to a 10,000 sq. ft. Newport facility, where it now operates. Signing a 99-year lease, the company agreed to pay the city $25,000 a year in rent for the building, as well as additional costs for insurance and taxes.
Since moving to the facility, Newport Craft has increased production from 1,800 barrels in 2017 to 8,000 barrels in 2020. This year, it is on track to produce 20,000 barrels, according to CEO Brendan O’Donnell.
The company has also grown its distilling business, increasing its barrels of aging rum and whiskey from 700 in 2017 to 1,200 in 2021. Staff has increased from eight employees to 32.
“We’re really playing Tetris in the space right now,” O’Donnell said. “Our 10,000 sq. ft. space went from about 10,000 to about 1,000 of workable production space.”
O’Donnell was part of an unnamed investment group that purchased the brewery and distillery in 2017. In 2019, the founders of the company left, and the brewery rebranded as Newport Craft and overhauled much of its product offerings.
Since then, the company acquired New York-based Braven Brewing in April 2019, and Radiant Pig Beer Company in June 2020. All three companies create what O’Donnell called a “brand collective,” with the Newport facility pushing out approximately 40% Newport Craft products, 40% Radiant Pig products, and 20% Braven products.
Increased demand has forced Newport Craft to begin contract brewing about 600 barrels a year in Dorchester, Massachusetts. It halted plans to expand distribution into New Jersey due to lack of production capacity.
Newport Craft’s offerings are sold in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Its spirits are available in 33 states.
“It’s a good problem,” O’Donnell said of the production demands. “But it’s something that we don’t want to lose, because momentum is something that’s very fragile, and we want to keep it as much as we can.”
The 30,000 sq. ft. facility will boast a maximum production capacity of 100,000 barrels a year, with storage space for 5,000 barrels of aging spirits. It will also feature a rooftop event space with capacity for up to 350 people.
O’Donnell expects Newport Craft to break ground in September, with a target of completing the project by the end of 2022.
The purchase of the land has been in the works for more than two and a half years. The company purchased the land with a tax-free bond through Dime Bank and the Rhode Island Industrial Facilities Corporation, according to a press release. The total land (used and vacant) was valued at $906,200 in 2019, according to city assessments.
Meanwhile, Newport Craft is focused on building its on-premise presence now that establishments are reopening. The company now employs nine sales reps to handle about 1,000 accounts a week.
“We try to work with people the best we can and be fair and treat people normally — not just texting them, [but] seeing them in person and making it that hospitality kind of human element,” O’Donnell said, estimating that the company comped-out about $100,000 of product last year in samplings.
“I think it’s really important to work on-premise to really build your brand,” he added. “And once you do that, people recognize you off-premise, and then they want to visit your facility.”
The company has also put an emphasis on enforcing product quality standards — something that O’Donnell said the beer brand lacked in the past.
“In the culture that we live in — especially in general social media, but also Untappd — you only have one shot in a lot of cases to win a new customer over. So we really take that extremely seriously,” he said. “We test and test and test for sometimes six months to release a product. And it is a very stringent process where if we have a bad batch and we don’t think it’s perfect, we will dump it.
“We are not just trying to make a good product, we’re trying to make a great product,” he added.
This summer, the brewery launched Coast, a 105-calorie, 4% ABV pale ale. Also set for release later this year is a pumpkin stout aged for a year in rum barrels. In the coming years, the brewery has 100 barrels of beer aging in rum and whiskey barrels to be released.
Additionally, O’Donnell teased the installation of an Oktober seamer, which will allow taproom staff to seam 32 oz. Crowlers directly on the bar.
“Rhode Island has been overlooked a lot as a craft beer community,” O’Donnell said. “There’s a lot of things to do in Rhode Island, and there’s a lot of places that are comparable to some of the best places in the United States.”