Concrete Beach Brewery’s social hall will be hopping with beer enthusiasts and locals soon: the 11,000-square-foot space opened to the public on Thursday, joining a handful of craft breweries in Wynwood.
The former warehouse has been split in half and transformed into a 149-seat social hall and two-story brewery that will host live entertainment, educational tours and related programming.
Amicon Construction, which specializes in upscale commercial interiors, built out the space over the course of a year and a half.
“We basically ripped up the entire slab of concrete because of the plumbing involved [with a brewery],” Adam Mopsick, founder and CEO of Amicon Construction, told The Real Deal.
Chunks of the concrete floor were used as part of the social hall’s design: trapped in a cage-like enclosure along the wall separating the two and surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass walls.
“Seventy-five percent of this wall is windows,” Chris McGrath, lead brewer, said. “We have a huge tour program, because when you break it down it’s science, it’s biology, it’s chemistry. We want to see people working.”
The circular bar, made of solid concrete is finished with repurposed wood. A glass wall separates the indoor and outdoor bar, the latter of which spills into a 3,000-square-foot courtyard. EoA is the interior designer.
“This has a lot of what Wynwood has — a lot of concrete and wood — but everything is custom-built,” AJ Mueller, Amicon’s vice president of construction, told TRD.
“This is the face of the company. We built [the social hall] to be a fun, carefree environment,” McGrath said.
The brewery, which includes a 20-barrel brew house and an onsite quality control lab, opened about a month ago. Two tanks are set aside for smaller, experimental batches and seasonal varieties. The brewing system was built and assembled in Canada, taken apart and reassembled at Concrete Beach.
Concrete Beach will produce 4,000 to 5,000 31-gallon barrels of beer annually, McGrath said.
“We’re always looking for projects we can get excited about,” Mueller said. “The beer was just the froth on the cake.”
The building, at 235 Northwest 24th Street, was sold in October for $23.5 million to EE Wynwood Central Owner, according to Miami-Dade property records. The area has seen a massive increase in land prices and redevelopment this cycle. On the same block as Concrete Beach Brewery is the future site of 250 Wynwood, an 11-unit upscale condo development.
Wynwood Brewing Company, J Wakefield Brewing, and Boxelder Craft Beer Market are also nearby.