Big Timber completes new brewery

After a few years in the making, Big Timber Brewing Company is now producing beer in its impressive new facility. “It’s been a long time coming,” said a visibly happy Matt Kwasniewski about the opening of the new production facility. Matt is president and head brewer at the Elkins, WV business.

His brewery partner Sam Mauzy, who heads up Big Timber’s sales and marketing, was likewise pleased. “It’s exciting to begin brewing beer in here, finally,” he said. “The last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful making sure things were ready to go.” 

The changeover to the new facility put them out of production for about two weeks, so the guys have a lot of catching up to do. This means the brewhouse is working overtime, brewing several runs per day to fill all the fermentors and get fresh beer made and packaged. 

During the move to the new facility it was all hands on deck for the ownership team, which includes Matt, Sam, and Matt’s wife Ashley and sister Amber Kwasniewski. Their pride in the new facility was evident and deserved. It is a true gem of a brewery.

---

 Check out this Brilliant Stream article from 2016 that detailed Big Timber’s plans to convert the old 1920s era building into a showcase brewery space.

Major production upgrade

The larger equipment at the new facility will give Big Timber much greater brewing capacity. Additionally, a lot of small improvements were made, which together will be a plus for brewery efficiency and beer quality and consistency. The production floor is so much more spacious allowing them complete many production processes more efficiently.

The old Big Timber brewery had 180 barrels of fermentation space. The new brewery has 450 barrels of fermentation space. Expect 2018’s record production of 3,700 barrels to be surpassed in 2019.

Major equipment in the current set up includes:

• One 15 bbl brewhouse
• Six 30 bbl fermentors.
• Two 30 bbl bright tanks 
• Four 60 bbl fermentors
• One 60 bbl bright 
• Two 15 bbl fermentors
• One 15 bbl bright
• Centrifuge
• Pressurized hop dosing vessel 
• Hot liquor tank
• Grain mill
• Boiler
• Draft and canned beer cold storage rooms
• Hop freezer room
• Keg filler
• Canning line
• Keg cleaning station
• Large exterior malt silo

Improved equipment allows them to use advanced brewing techniques that they were unable to do  at the old place. For instance, they will begin spunding to carbonate their beer. Spunding is a process where they capture much of the CO2 produced during the latter stage of fermentation and, instead of just blowing it off into the atmosphere, they use it to naturally carbonate their beer. Their new set up allows them to do that. 

Big Timber’s dry hopped beers should also see an advantage coming from a new piece of equipment that gives more control and efficiency to the dry-hopping process. 

“We’ll now be able to dry-hop under pressure which we couldn’t do at the old brewery,” Matt explains. “We got a new hop dosing vessel for that.”

Matt figures that the 150% greater fermentation space will allow an effective increase in production volume of around 80%. The difference in numbers is due to much of the new fermentation space being devoted to the production of lagers (primarily Logger Lager). The fermentation, conditioning and maturation time for their lagers will be approximately double the time for their ales. That extra time in tank means the tanks turn much less often. 

Beer variety expanding 

“At the old facility, 99% of our production went into our core varieties because that’s all we had space for,” Matt says. The new space will allow for a nice increase in the variety of beer Big Timber can produce each year. 

Back in 2014 when they opened, they began with ales because that is what the state’s beer market seemed to need the most at that time. Once their IPA and Porter caught on and obtained distribution around the state, most of Big Timber’s production had to be devoted to just keeping up with them. Lagers had to wait.  

Matt says they’ve been working on their lager for quite a while but couldn’t get to it before now. They did make a small run of canned Logger Lager late last year as sort of a test market.

“It’s something we never went full-bore into simply because we didn’t have the production space,” he said.

Now, Big Timber is coming out strong on lager by going into large scale production with Logger Lager. Stylistically speaking, it is a German-style pils — clean, dry, and crisp, with classic Bavarian hops. It’s a beer style very popular in West Virginia.

“With the pils we wanted to add an everyday crusher beer that isn’t too intense on the palate,” Matt said. “We figure that may surpass IPA as our largest seller.” 

While lager may be their first big project, they have not forgotten the ales side. Big Timber will continue doing some cool things we saw this fall and winter, only on a larger scale.

Bring on the hazies, the sours, the barrel-aged

“We’ll be a lot more flexible here,” Matt says. “We’ll have a lot more small batch product. We’ll play around with the hazies and New Englands more, do more kettle sours, do more barrel-aging. We’re going to be playing with a lot more yeast strains (on IPAs). We’re going to soon be doing a Key Lime Gose for release in cans.” 

“I love drinking hoppy beers,” he says. He explains that he wants to make a series of hazy IPAs and kettle sours, not just because he likes them, but because they bring in new customers and also create new beer drinkers. “You’re just expanding the market and getting more beer drinkers.” Matt hopes to keep a rotator New England-stye IPA pretty much available year-round, and the same thing with the kettle sours. Also in the conversation is the possibility of adding more nitro beers and even pastry stouts. 

Sales director Sam Mauzy says people are really excited about their new beers. He saw a lot of buzz created in the last few months by their Overcast and Hoarfrost IPAs, Logger Lager, and the AlpenGlow Gose. He thinks the market is ready for a lot more.

“West Virginia drinks plenty of beer, so we’ve got room to grow,” he says. 

Sam says that the market share for craft beer is lower in West Virginia than in most other places. He sees that as an opportunity. He thinks Big Timber can increase sales especially in beer retailers, the big grocery and convenience store chains. Just having Logger Lager in cans will help them get more facings on the shelf, creating a better billboard effect. Mauzy says they are now in Walmart and in most chain gas stations too. Independent market observations back up the belief that Big Timber now seems to be the most widely distributed beer label in the state among West Virginia breweries.

Distribution considerations

For their small batch hazy IPA beer series, Big Timber will continue to produce cans for very limited release to distribution. Most of it, however, will be devoted to at-the-brewery sales. They expect production runs to be 20 barrel batches, with around 75% of that going into cans and the remainder in draft. Matt says that due to the New England IPA style’s much more limited shelf life, he wants to be very careful with distribution to ensure people are getting a fresh, well-maintained beer.

“We want people to come to here and buy it,” he says. That helps build sales for their taproom and also helps them control the price. New England-style IPAs are considerably more expensive to make than are traditional IPAs. Matt feels their hazy IPA is a good value at $4.00 a 16 oz. can. They can sell it for that price direct-to-consumer at the brewery and make a fair margin. But when they put the beer into distribution, the retail price tends to be much higher, and that concerns Matt who has always stated that he wants his beer to sell at a price that is affordable to West Virginia consumers. The marketing strategy of brewery-only releases for New England style IPAs is a very common one today. Anywhere from a bunch of breweries in New England to The Veil to Aslin to Hoof Hearted to Dancing Gnome, it’s the way it’s done. 

Employment numbers grow

Employment at Big Timber Brewing is also increasing, with the count already up to six people working in beer production and packaging. With several others working on the marketing and taproom sales side, Big Timber is becoming a great asset for the city of Elkins. The brewery not only pays a competitive wage, but also provides benefits.

“We invest a lot in our employees,” Matt said. “We do 75% of their health care now, offer a Simple IRA match, and a health savings account.”

Take me to your laboratory

To back up its quality assurance program, Big Timber is adding a laboratory. “We’re tying to take a step up in our production, and with that you have to take a step up in your quality control,” Matt says. It’s not sexy, he says, but having double and triple redundancy is critical to growing in today’s beer world. Every batch will be tested and an archive will be kept. He says there are a lot of points that you need to control with tight tolerances when you expect to grow in the canned beer market. “Quality control is something you can’t relax on.”

We know that equipping even a small brewery laboratory space with the sophisticated equipment needed to run a good QA program can take many thousands of dollars. It’s great to see Big Timber stepping up to the plate and investing in this. It’s great to see them setting a standard for the overall West Virginia beer market.

Next step: a new taproom

Matt observes that the territory within an hour’s drive of Elkins has to be one of the most sparsely populated areas on the East Coast. He says getting people to come to the Big Timber brewery from Charleston or from the state’s other more populated areas is a challenge. The brewery’s current taproom always does very well with locals, but he felt they need to upgrade it significantly in order to attract more people from outside the local area. So the Big Timber folks developed a plan to address that. A large, new taproom will be constructed as an addition to the new brewery building. Ground breaking is set for this spring with construction targeted be be complete by the end of this year.

The new taproom will be a first class space, with its design done by brewery partner Amber Kwasniewski. With Amber’s background in architechture and talent for design, you should expect the taproom to be a pretty snazzy place. It will include a beautiful outdoor seating area and green space overlooking the Tygart Valley River. Amber also designs all of Big Timber’s labels and handles their social media. Her designs for the Big Timber can packages are outstanding.

Ashley Kwasniewski will manage the new taproom operation, as she has the current one. Their popular taproom in the original building will remain open, at least for the time being. As an interim step, a temporary taproom is being installed into a small space inside the new brewery building and should open soon. It will serve as the official licensed “brewpub” and the existing taproom at the former brewery will be transitioned to a tavern license. Once construction is completed on the new taproom, the temporary taproom will be closed.

Ashley says she expects they will create 15 or more new jobs when the new taproom gets open. The taproom will offer food service, which they have not been able to do before. They want to make it more of a destination, one that will draw in more visitors and tourists. You should expect the small batch specialty beer program to really bloom when the new taproom opens. 

Big Timber Brewing is a true leader among the state’s breweries. With their investment of roughly $1.75 million in the new facility and a budget of about half a million more for the new taproom construction, these folks are showing the world that a homegrown, local West Virginia brewery can really develop into a very significant business asset and employer for their community. Big Timber’s new brewery and coming new taproom will certainly keep it at the forefront of the industry.

Big Timber Brewing Company
Downtown Elkins Production Facility
2 Davis Avenue
Elkins, WV

Photo Gallery