Second brewery plans to set up across street from Bold City Brewery

[thelakelander]

What’s brewing on Rosselle Street?

One block of Rosselle Street is about to get maltier. Hoppier, too

You’ve already got Bold City Brewery in an old building by the railroad tracks, sending its beers to about 60 local restaurants and bars. Three days a week, they open their small taproom and serve their beer themselves.

Bold City plans to grow, adding more brewing capacity so it can sell its beer elsewhere in the state.

Meanwhile, Ben Davis has plans to open a brewery of his own, Intuition Ale Works. And he’s got his eye on an old warehouse that’s almost right across the street from Bold City.

It’d create a bit of a beer center in the rundown industrial neighborhood that does offer the advantage of large, empty buildings that are not too far from anywhere else.

“I just like the building,” Davis said. “The walls are brick. It’s got wooden rafters.

“But it is a bit of a coincidence,” Davis said. “There’s just not a whole lot of buildings available with high ceilings, open space and the ability to ship in and out. I was looking at downtown, but the landlords there aren’t very easy to deal with. They keep thinking a law office is about to move in.”

Davis is still working on his lease. He said he and the property owner have agreed on the basics, but he’s still waiting to hear from his contractors about the build-out costs. He has only half his equipment and that’s in storage. But he’s still hoping to open by early summer.

As America’s taste for beer has broadened beyond simply the national brands of mass-produced beer, hundreds of smaller craft breweries have sprouted up across the country.

The number of breweries in the United States has grown from fewer than 100 in 1980 to more than 1,500 today, according to the Brewers Association.

Davis is the former owner of The Grotto wine shop and bar in San Marco. He also had his own wine label, Tallulah, in Sonoma, Calif., for six years.

But he and his wife wanted to return to Jacksonville (he’s part of the Winn-Dixie Davises) to raise their family. So they came home, and he switched from wine to beer, and started studying at Chicago’s Siebel Institute of Technology, the nation’s best-known school of brewing.

Now he’s planning to open his own brewery. Like Bold City, he plans to send kegs to local bars and have a small taproom of his own.

He figures he’ll spend about $150,000 on equipment, plus the build-out costs of brewery and taproom. He doesn’t see competition with the existing brewery across the street.

“I’m kind of a Belgian beer freak,” he said. “So my beers will have a Belgian twist. But we’ll be a lot like Bold City: Start small and grow.”

Brian Miller opened Bold City in the fall of 2008. He makes five mainstay beers, four seasonals and the occasional batch of this or that. These days, he’s brewing about 35 barrels a week. (A barrel is 31 gallons and the standard measure of beer. A keg is half a barrel.)

About 10 of those barrels are consumed on a good weekend in the small taproom that’s built into a corner of the brewery. The rest goes out to taps around Jacksonville.

But Miller’s got plans. He bottles some beer, but his bottling equipment doesn’t work quickly enough to bottle much.

“I’ve got parts coming in from Canada,” he said, “if they don’t get caught up in customs.”

He’s hoping to pick up the bottle pace as early as this week. And Miller is planning to expand his current seven-barrel brewing setup. In the next couple of months, he’s going to order a new 30-barrel system, he said. That will allow him to brew enough beer to start shipping it down to Tampa and Orlando.

“You’ve got to not run out it,” he said, “when the customer wants it.”

As for having another brewery right in the neighborhood, Miller said he’s not worried.

“It just creates a good relationship,” Miller said, “which is what craft brewing is all about. There’s no competition. It’ll just be 'Hey, man, how’d you make that IPA [India Pale Ale]?’

“It’s good for Jacksonville, that’s the main thing. I think a third or a fourth one would be good, too.

“Look at Asheville, there’s breweries all over the place. Maybe we can become that for Jacksonville.”

http://jacksonville.com/business/2010-01-31/story/what%E2%80%99s_brewing_on_rosselle_street

[thelakelander]

There’s more business brewing

While Bold City Brewery and Intuition Ale Works have plans for Rosselle Street, two other business are looking to expand the Jacksonville beer scene in other locations.

Luciano Scremin got permission from the Jacksonville Beach Planning Commission earlier this month to open Engine 15 Brewing Co. on Beach Boulevard.

Customers would brew their own beer at the business and then come back two weeks later to bottle it. Scremin said he hoped to open this summer in the same shopping center where Mojo Kitchen is.

Scremin said he plans to open a pub serving beer from other breweries and food, and hopes to eventually get all the permits to serve his own beer as well.

A similar business called The Malt Shop operated in Mandarin for a short while but closed in 1999.

Meanwhile, Michael Payne said that he’s close to finalizing a location for his Aardwolf Pub and Brewery.

“It’s something we’ve been working on,” he said, “but it’s a struggle to find a location. We’ve been looking at a few places near Tinseltown and we’re negotiating with the landlord.”

Payne, who has studied brewing at Siebel Institute of Technology and Doeman’s Academy in Munich, said he’s got two partners and their finances are solid.

“I think it’s more a matter of when than if,” Payne said.

http://jacksonville.com/business/2010-01-31/story/what%E2%80%99s_brewing_on_rosselle_street

More online

Get more information about area breweries 

boldcitybrewery.com

intuitionaleworks.com

engine15brewing.com

aardwolfbar.com

[ProjectMaximus]

Awesome. My friend and I were out drinking Bold City last night and she told me Ben (she's related) was in the works of finalizing a location.

Did not realize he was from the Winn-Dixie Davises though, lol.

[thelakelander]

So we may have the makings of a brewing district.  If everything goes well, this will be a great us of an underutilized urban core industrial area that is within walking distance of dense residential neighborhoods.

[billy]

Contact email for Ben Davis and Michael Payne?

[thirdeye]

Contact email for Ben Davis and Michael Payne?

ben@intuitionaleworks.com

[urbanlibertarian]

Hmmm...  Makes me wonder what type of "X" district the warehouse district of Springfield could become.

[billy]

yes indeed