Franconia Taps Distributor to Help its March Toward Craft-Brew World Domination

Dennis Wehrmann, brewmaster at McKinney’s 2011 Best of Dallas®-winning Franconia Brewing Company, hasn’t given up on bottling. His targeted late-summer or early-fall starting time passed, but bottling is still in the works for the company, he says.

And with the decision to hand distribution duties over to Ben E. Keith, he should have a lot more time to work on that, he says. Rather than he and his employees making trips all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area and occasional jaunts down to Austin and Houston, Ben E. Keith will handle deliveries.

Clara Ingram at Ben E. Keith says the distribution company will distribute to San Antonio, Austin and Houston along with the North Texas area.

“Hopefully the next step is he gets a machine to fill the kegs,” she says. “It’s a lot more time consuming to fill by hand. With his capacity level, he’s not having any trouble producing more product. It’s just getting the kegs filled.”

But Wehrmann doesn’t plan to change anything about his kegging process, which he describes as “half-automated,” and wants to continue to concentrate on the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“We want to be the beer from here,” he says.

Franconia’s latest seasonal release is its excellent Winter Wheat, to be followed by Pils in the spring. Wehrmann says he is excited about a few new styles in the works, but don’t expect, say, an imperial stout or IPA. He has no plans to stray from the traditional German styles he loves and that his customers have come to expect.

Also, Wehrmann will host a Franconia beer dinner 7 p.m. Monday at the Holy Grail Pub, featuring aged Maibock, Fallenbock (fresh and oak-aged) and Winter Wheat with beer-braised pork loin, onion-potato soup and more. Reservations ($50 per person) are available at 972-377-6633 or by email.