When Deep Ellum Brewing Co. first opened in 2011, expansion plans were always on the owners' minds. They purchased their Deep Ellum property outright and then leased a portion of the space out to a printing company. If you came in the wrong door you had to walk through a sea of technicians working at computer stations alongside plotters spitting out huge sheets of paper. The scene didn't exactly get you in the beer-swilling mood, but the tenants offset the cost of making some of the most edgy beers in Dallas.
This week, Tait Lifto, who handles sales and marketing for the brewery, announced the printing company had been pushed out to make room for coolers and other equipment to help store the products from their expanded brewing outfit. The brewery has added seven new fermentation tanks and a massive 90-barrel brite tank, which is used to carbonate freshly brewed beer. Altogether the new equipment configuration has expanded brewing capacity to approximately 300,000 gallons per year. That's a lot of drunk.
DEBC isn't the only brewery expanding. Michael Peticolas, whom we just profiled in our 2013 People Issue, recently poured a new slab in his Design District brewery to accommodate four more fermentation tanks and an additional brite tank. The new equipment, which should be operational by the end of summer, will double the award-winning brewery's capacity.
While new craft breweries continue to capture our attention and round out the local beer drinking scene, simply opening a brewery isn't the hard part. Investment money in Dallas is as plentiful as asphalt, and bars are eager to carry local brews. That a few of our local breweries have moved past their initial implementation to expand capacity shows that they are making great beer to meet expanding demand. It's an exciting time to be a local drinker in Dallas.
