(Brooklyn, NY) – BeerPulse sat down with Brooklyn Brewery Chairman and President, Steve Hindy, for a quick interview while at the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego. Part of the discussion centered around the sale of Hindy’s voting shares. The other part focused on growth at Brooklyn and in the craft segment…

On Brooklyn’s ongoing $12 million expansion:

“We have eight more 200-barrel fermenters coming in later this year. Then there is still some other equipment that we will buy in Brooklyn and that will essentially complete the $12 million expenditure. And we are looking at possibly expanding our capacity up in Utica [where Brooklyn currently has some of its production contracted]. Right now, our capacity between Brooklyn and Utica is probably 230,000 barrels. We’ll do 180,000 barrels this year and if we keep up this momentum, we’ll hit up against capacity in 2014. We have to decide what we’re going to do pretty soon. Another alternative would be to build another brewery.”

On new capacity opening in the marketplace:

“I think you could do a simple calculation based on new [breweries-in-planning]. Add 500 barrels for each new brewpub and 1,000 barrels for each new brewery. Even that gets you up to ten million barrels of new capacity.

The biggest challenge for any manufacturer is expansion. We’re doing maybe 180,000 barrels this year and we could build capacity to take us to 300,000 barrels in two or three years- if we don’t fill that, we still have to pay for those tanks. It’s a tricky calculation. I think some people are going to get it right and some people are not going to get it right. All the expansion that is being announced now is based on the last five years of growth which has been the steepest period of growth in craft brewing [in terms of volume].”

On Tenth and Blake:

“I think it’s pretty smart what they’re doing. They are really going to school on the whole craft segment. They are getting their people Cicerone-trained. They are trying to figure out a way to be small like us. I’m pretty impressed with what they have done with Blue Moon. Obviously, I think they have more clout with wholesalers because of MillerCoors’ importance to wholesalers.”

BP: Do you see them being a benefit to the craft segment?

“I think so. I know a lot of my colleagues don’t agree but, to me, the more they talk about flavor in beer, the more likely it is that the people they are talking to will try Brooklyn Lager or Sorachi Ace or one of our beers. I think it has always been a dilemma for them because the more they talk about flavor [with T&B], the more they signal to people that their big brands don’t really have much flavor.”