Smuttynose – New Brewery Update

Things are starting to pick up at our new, under-construction brewery in Hampton, NH.  Last week, which saw lots of visible changes to the space, was capped off by a visit from New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan (Above) and a busy keg social on Saturday afternoon, with over 100 people stopping by for a pint and look around. 

What’s happened recently? 

Quite a bit actually.  Most significantly, the production facility and offices are nearly complete and we’re starting to receive pieces of equipment, which you’ll see below.

Six 270 barrel fermenters and two 270 barrel bright tanks have arrived from Mueller.  They are being brought in and put into place as this post is being written.

Packaging conveyors and machines are being laid out and installed. This does not include our bottle filler, labeler or rinser that are coming from Germany, but includes machinery that will prepare the cases, six packs and twelve packs to receive filled bottles.

The centrifuge and its control panel (in the picture) have also arrived and will be installed in the near future.  This means we can spin yeast and other haze-casting compounds out of the beer to the extent we wish as well as recovering more beer out of each fermenter. For you, it means clear beer in the keg or bottle.

We’ve also recently fired up the boilers and incoming water treatment system, which will prepare our process water and the steam we’ll use to brew beer.

So, when will it open? 
We don’t have a set date yet. There are many timelines that feed into the bigger timeline, which means there are lots of variables between now and then. Our brewhouse and bottle filling equipment should be leaving Europe in November, for what we hope will be an uneventful, month-long, trans-Atlantic voyage in November. Once the state-of-the-art arrives in Hampton, the installation and commissioning process will begin. We don’t exactly know how long that will take, but it’s safe to assume a few months. The pub and restaurant is slated in late spring, as transitioning production is our main focus right now.

Please make sure you imagine a large asterisk next to this last paragraph. There are plenty of variables that could affect this timeline and we don’t want to incur the wrath of the fates…

The place is starting to look (and sound) like a real brewery, but there is still plenty of work to be done. More updates will follow, as will more keg socials.  Thanks for checking in.
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