Beyond that, the future of Jackie O's is unknown. But last year, after Hill Farmstead's Festival of Farmhouse Ales, Clark and Oestrike popped over to Allagash Brewing Company to scope out their expansion. More specifically, the guys wanted to see how a brewery scales up from a 20-BBL system—the space, the moving parts, and perhaps most of all: the most effective and efficient ways to approach such growth. The most eye-opening aspects, though, were the attention to detail, the ingenuity of how Allagash grew into their new space, and the concept of adding a second brewhouse to an existing operation. The seed of an idea was planted.

For now, it will take a full six turns on the brewhouse to fill one of the new tanks. The plan is to turn that around in 24 hours, so they’ll start to add a third brewing shift. “I’ll be doing that for a month straight,” Clark explains. “One: I want do it. But the other side of it is, I want to do it first so that when I have other people do it, they can’t complain. Or, if they do, I understand what their complaints are.”

That sort of empathy is a core tenet in the culture of Jackie O’s, and more largely, the city of Athens itself. Clark describes it in simple terms of “supporting people as humans,” giving them a job they can be both be good at and happy with. To that end, the brewery has added some non-beer ventures over the years based on employees’ passions and skills. In 2009, they added a bakery, which uses spent grain to make the pizza dough and buns served at the pubs, as well as baked goods that are sold at the farmers market and all over town.