Creatures Comforts debuts new brewery

Creature Comforts fans barely survived the Great Tropicalia Shortage of 2016-2017. Retailers rationed the beer when it was available, consumers followed delivery trucks and memorized the scheduled times they would stop at their favorite stores. Seriously, people really did this. The cries of “Make More Trop” have died down now as the Southern Mill brewery quietly started producing more of this liquid gold along with two other Creature Comforts core beers, Athena Berliner Weisse and Bibo Pilsner.

The Athens, Georgia brewery announced plans for their second location in early 2017. The 36,000 square foot building at the Southern Mill complex was originally built in 1900 and most recently produced stonewashed denim but was closed and abandoned some time in the 90s. After sitting empty for decades Creature Comforts had their work cut out for them to make the space usable. They did a tremendous job converting it to a modern brewery while maintaining many of the historic architectural elements.

A four-vessel, 85-barrel Krones brewhouse was installed, with plenty of room to add a second brewhouse and supporting equipment if needed. Co-founder and Head Brewer David Stein says there are no immediate plans to install the second brewhouse, their focus will remain on producing quality over quantity. Creature Comforts expects to produce around 50,000 barrels of beer in 2018 between their two breweries.

An on-site, state of the art lab allows brewers to monitor all aspects of their beer and water chemistry. However, Stein admits that science alone cannot tell them if a beer is right, they also have tasting rooms where each batch is sampled and evaluated on several factors. Occasionally, red lights are used in the tasting rooms to eliminate any visual bias when sampling the beers.

Creature Comforts will continue to produce smaller batch beers at their original Downtown Athens brewery and tasting room and plans to move others to the Southern Mill brewery. With the increased capacity, Tropicalia should be available for most of those seeking it out. I’m glad we all made it through the famine.