New brewery facility opens in Williamsburg

Brooklyn BreweryMayor Michael Bloomberg and Steve Hindy, Brooklyn Brewery president, cut the ribbon today on Brooklyn Brewery’s new brewhouse, next door to its existing facility on North 11th Street in Williamsburg, which it has operated since 1996. The $8 million expansion increases the brewery’s production capacity to 120,000 barrels per year, from 12,000. With the expansion, the brewery has added 10 jobs and it expects to hire another 15 people in the next two years. “The expansion of our Brooklyn Brewery means that most of our growth in the next three years will be in Brooklyn,” Hindy said. “We expect to double our sales in the next three years.” In 2009 and 2010, Brooklyn Brewery sales rose 20 percent, while total beer consumption in the U.S. fell. With its expansion now complete, the brewery expects to increase sales another 100 percent over the next three years. The expansion will also allow for brewery tours and special events on weekdays. Before the expansion, the brewery was drawing roughly 2,000 visitors per weekend, even though public hours were limited to Friday, Saturdays and Sundays. Last year, Brooklyn Brewery sold 108,000 barrels of beer, most of it produced under contract at the Matt Brewery in Utica, New York. Empire State Development awarded the brewery an $800,000 Downstate Revitalization grant for the expansion project. TRD