Berkeley Springs Brewing rising fast at new Coolfont location

Changing your brewery location is a much more involved process than one might imagine. Just ask Karl Wagenbrenner of Berkeley Springs Brewing Company.

For two years he searched for a new location at which to build his future. Now that he has found it, he is moving step by step, and some steps are pretty big ones. In early January, he shut down the former brewpub to prepare for the move.

“The first thing we did was get our lease with the new landlord and sent that out to the TTB,” Karl said.

The TTB transferred his tax paid warehouse permit to the new location, and from there he was able to keep supplying his wholesale accounts with the kegs he had in stock, while he prepared to relocate his brewery equipment. He then gutted and built out the first floor of his new two-story building. He prepared one end of the building to house his existing brewing equipment. He added a grain handling room, storage rooms, a brewery retail store and barroom, and two ADA compliant bathrooms. The brewery equipment was dismantled at the former place and reinstalled at the new location. All this took time, about four months to be exact, before he could get his brewery license moved and resume production.

“We just recently got the new brewery license up so we could start producing beer again,” Karl told Brilliant Stream in late April.

Now, he is busy brewing again on his electrically fired, 3-barrel Stout Tanks system. He is trying to catch up with the backlog of orders for things like Stonewall IPA, Vienna Calling Lager, and CaCapon Kolsch. In reinstalling the brewery, a few new things were added, such as propane-fired inline hot water heaters and some expanded fermentation capacity. He purchased two 7-barrel stainless steel fermenters from Junkyard Brewing Company in Minnesota earlier this month. He also built a manual 4-head bottler mechanism, which he will put in service filling 22-oz bomber bottles. Expect to see some specialties and one-offs show up in those bottles, which will be sold at the brewery store.

By moving a few miles out from of the town of Berkeley Springs (a.k.a. Bath) and it’s famous, high quality water, you might be concerned that the water quality would change at the new site. But that is not the case.

“Out here, we’ve got a new well that’s over 225 ft. deep and has a flow over 200 gallons a minute,” Karl said. “It is the very same aquifer that the Town of Bath pulls their water from. It has no iron, no sulphur, it is a constant reliable water flow that we’re going to be turning some good beer out of.”

Get the brewpub back selling beer

“The first thing we’re going to do is get the brewpub back up and running so we can serve pints and sell growlers,” said Karl.

Hopefully opening by the end of this month, the initial beer outlet will operate from a room at the opposite end of the building from the brewery. In that room they have rebuilt the bar from the old brewpub. This will allow the serving of pints and flights and filling of growlers. Watch the brewery Facebook page for announcements of the reopening date.

But wait, there’s more

The next immediate project is constructing a 2,200 sq. ft. addition onto the front of the existing building, When that is completed this summer, Karl expects to have the brewpub restaurant back in operation with a private club license, allowing him to have a full-service bar. The restaurant will feature counter service with lots of communal tables, indoor beer garden style. Karl says to expect live music on weekends from a 12′ x 12′ stage.

A comfortable outdoor seating area will allow guests to also enjoy the green natural setting in which the brewery sits. A spacious on-site parking lot will be very convenient to the guest areas.

BBQ rising

Outdoors on one side of the building, Karl will install two nice barbecue smokers. “No one in this area serves barbecue,” he said. He will revamp the BSBC menu to feature primarily BBQ and side items.

A short drive to nature

The scenic property sits about four miles from downtown Berkeley Springs at what was formerly the Coolfont Resort. Last year, this section of Coolfont property was sold to local business people, and they plan to redevelop it with more residential and vacation destination amenities. The brewery will be among the first projects to open. Down the road, plans are in the works for a beer festival and music events here.

B&B means Bed & Brewery

Looking ahead to next year, Karl plans to convert three former efficiency apartments in the upstairs half of the building into lodging rooms. The fourth upstairs unit will serve as the brewery office.

“Our plans are to turn this into a Bed and Brewery package,” he said.

Interestingly, he has in mind decorating each room to a different style of beer. For instance you might have the Stout Room with lots of browns and the Pale Ale Room decorated in rich golds and ambers. He is toying with offering different packages with the room, such as one that would allow the guests to make a beer with the brewers — or maybe just work an hour helping package the beer. He thinks there is a market for an activity that would help beer fans understand what it takes to go from grain to glass.

Bigger brewery coming

In his lease agreement, Berkeley Springs Brewing Company has a 5,000 sq. ft. building that will be built for them to house a new production brewery. The site is about 150 feet from the brewpub building. In the new brewery Karl will install a 10-barrel brewhouse and larger fermenters. He anticipates adding an automated packaging system, either for cans or bottles. As part of that project, he expects to hire a couple more brewers. The new brewery will focus on the distribution market, while a small brewery will continue operating in the brewpub building.

Wagenbrenner says he has a lot of ideas that he was never really able to try out at the old location.

“Now that we’re here, the opportunities are endless,” he added.

Berkeley Springs Brewing Company

At the Coolfont Resort
110 Michigan Lane
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia 25411

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