It’ll take just a little bit longer than expected for Fat Tire to be brewed on the East Coast.
Although New Belgium Brewing Company had initially planned for its new Asheville, N.C. brewery to be functional by early 2015, the company today said that it has delayed construction of the facility about eight months.
Citing recent capacity upgrades at its brewery in Fort Collins, Colo. New Belgium now expects the buildout of the Asheville brewery to begin in 2014, company spokesman Bryan Simpson told Brewbound.com. Early plans had called for construction of the new brewery to begin as early as August of this year.
“After we put that 70,000 barrels of additional capacity in at the Fort Collins brewery, we thought that we might be able complete the construction in Asheville without turning everybody’s hair gray,” he said.
And because capacity from the new brewery is no longer needed to fill New Belgium’s immediate sales demand, construction crews for the city of Asheville will be able to complete projects on surrounding roadways without any inconvenience, Simpson said.
“With deconstruction in Asheville wrapping up, our plan is to operate at maximum efficiency in Fort Collins and bring Asheville online at just the right moment,” Simpson said in a press statement. “Along with our construction partners and the City of Asheville, we look forward to using the additional time to balance the many elements of such a dynamic project.”
Initial brewing capacity at New Belgium’s Asheville location will be 400,000 barrels. The facility could end up reaching 750,000 barrels of production after a second phase of construction.