Hershey, PA — It’s been said before, but we continually evolve. It might have been on a less visible stage during our early days in Harrisburg, but the changes in the four years we’ve been in Hershey are dramatic. We continue to search for and work with like minds who share our vision, and we’re excited to be hooking up with some old friends on a new building project.
Collaborating with Dave Maule Architects and Pyramid Construction on the Hershey build four years ago was an intense project. Even though we were under tight time constraints, we found two partners who shared our vision on a large-scale custom project requiring mountains of detail work and the ability to switch gears on the fly; their efforts speak for themselves.
This new collaboration, called the Splinter Cellar, will create a dynamic area that adds needed fermentation space for wood-aged specialty beers and serves as the new entrance for our behind-the scenes guided tours. The room will feature glass exterior walls on the northeast side of the brewery, and three wooden fermenters (called foeders) that stand more than 23 feet tall.
We’ve been making wood-aged beers in oak barrels almost as long as we’ve been brewing Scratch beers. Our first project, Splinter Gold (2009 release), used Scratch #3 as the base beer; since then we’ve released other Splinter beers periodically. About eight months ago, we installed three smaller foeders to ramp up the program. Our first large volume Splinter project features Mad Elf aged with more than 600 pounds of Balaton cherries we sourced from Peters Orchard in Adams County. The progress on this beer, soon to be known as Wild Elf, has been so promising we want keep it going, and the Splinter Cellar will give us that opportunity.
Along with the Splinter Cellar, we’ll be moving offices to another part of the brewery to give our growing team a little wiggle room.
Finally, we’re excited about some exterior changes. We’ll be building a courtyard and greenspace that runs along the building to create a dedicated pedestrian path separate from the parking area, and we will begin work on the parking lot upgrades with a long-term goal of increasing parking spaces. We’re looking forward to bringing this space to life, and then, we’ll tackle whatever comes next.