(Bay Shore, NY) – Great South Bay Brewery recently announced that it has moved to a “new home.” The company signed a lease for the land and a 39,000 square foot building located at 25 Drexel Drive and has been working on the new production facility for a while now. The project will be completed soon.

So, what does this mean for Great South Bay and local drinkers?

BeerPulse caught up with Chief Operations Officer, Phil Ebel, to find that out…

1) Is production completely shut down while this is happening or is beer still being produced out of another location?

We have been in the construction phase of building our 30 bbl brewing facility for over a year at our Union Blvd location in Bay Shore, NY. There were many “red tape” issues standing in our way. With every step forward we took, there were two unknown steps back. To not get into too much private details of our business, after some lengthy negotiations, we had to do what was best for our company and seek a new location.

While our brewery was under construction, we were running a 1 bbl pilot brewery out of the other building on the property which also doubled as our tasting room. Our beer has been produced in production batches at a local contract brewing facility since 2010 and this entire process has been to get us self-sufficient here in Bay Shore.

2) When is the project expected to be complete?

There are many things that need to be completed to get your brewery up and running. We have some paperwork to do as well as some renovations to the new building (not as major as the last project) to get this up and running. We can’t say for sure when we’ll be up and running but it should be fairly soon.

3) What is annual working capacity at the current facility?

With the current equipment we have right now that is waiting to be set up, our annual production capacity is about 6,000 bbl’s.

4) What will annual working capacity be at the new facility once first phase is complete?

With the space we have here in the new location, we will be adding more fermentors to get us up to about 18,000 bbl’s of production capacity for the first full year of production. We will also be installing a canning line and a large format bottling line as well as taking on some other breweries to contract for in order to fill the space.

5) Any idea on expandable capacity (if you add new tanks, etc. down the road)?

With the space we have open, we have projected that we have the space to get up to 50,000 bbl’s within five years.

6) What is the size of the new system and manufacturer?

We have a custom built ABT 30 bbl Brewing System. We have had the system in our possession since October 2011 and have been working on getting it installed since then.

7) Any new territories for distribution later in 2012 or 2013?

It’s hard to say if we will expand into any new territories in 2012, but 2013 is looking bright for us. We hope to move into the Metro NY market first (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan) and then spread to key markets such as Philly.

—