Hidden River Brewing Company has expanded! As you probably noticed on a recent visit, HR has been hard at work renovating the 300+ year old barn at Brinton Lodge in Douglassville. In the barn they have upgraded to a 10 barrel brew system that will allow them to produce even more beer than before!
Here is a look at them with their original mash tun…
And here is a look at their current brewhouse…
We recently talked with Owner/Brewer Kevin Margitich about the expansion, and what it means for Hidden River going forward.
What brought on this expansion?
We outgrew our 3bbl system some time ago. There were dozens of options on what project to begin first. A year and half ago we built out a kitchen and purchased a few 5bbl tanks. The kitchen was 100% nessasary. The beer and food experience really go hand and hand and the kitchen buildout was something that we were able to handle. Buying more tanks helped. We were brewing upwards of 5 days a week just to keep up. When we finally got our ducks in a row we started moving forward with the project.
What size is the new system?
The new system is a 10bbl Specific Mechanical Brewhouse. We did half dozen collaborations leading up to buying and see who had a brewhouse that ft our style. Everyone had a different system. We wanted to take all of our daily headaches and make sure they were not going to be part of anything in the future. Our kettle and mash tun are nicely oversized, and we have 10 and 20 barrel tanks.
How big is the barn? What’s the history on it?
The barn is pretty small. The brewing space is about 1000 sq ft. We have super high ceilings. We carved out a bit of space for grain storage and a cold box. There is a small section upstairs for storage space as well. The history of the barn is a bit loose. We know that there is stone there from the 1700s. As for the use over the centuries, we don’t have all of those facts. It would have been plenty easy to just knock the whole building down and start fresh. But that wasn’t even a consideration. With all the history tied to Brinton Lodge, the “what ifs” associated with the barn were enough to keep the bones of the building intact.
Does this expansion mean more crowlers, and possibly 16oz cans with future releases?
Beer “to go” will be available more regularly. We’ll start utiizing a mobile canner almost instantly as well. The daily operation in the brewery is going to change a bit. We’ll focus a lot more on packaging. 99% of what we made was sold in house. We’ll let more out in kegs, more 32oz cans, growler fills, and ultimately 16oz cans. We’ve always been “pub first” focused so that our customers would be able to have options when visiting us. That won’t really be as much of an issue now.
Will you do crowler releases more often now?
There will still be 32oz cans available every week. As of now we plan on just having more available and limits be less restrictive.
Will you fill growlers to go now?
Growlers will continue the way we have done. As we open more days we’ll see what changes happen.
What other changes can we expect out of HR going forward?
There were bunch of areas that we weren’t able to explore as often as we would have liked. You’ll see more lager fermentation happening. The cider program will increase. We hope that we can revisit saison to a different degree. We’ll still focus on IPA and Stout, but we’ve always tried to keep up with peoples palates, as well as, doing what we want to. Our only goal is to fine tune everything.
