Tony Kiss

tkiss@gannett.com

Asheville's Burial Beer Company announced plans Wednesday to build a second brewery and tasting room on the edge of Biltmore Village, a project that will eventually include a restaurant, the company's owners announced.

The new Burial operation will be at 16 Shady Oak Drive in historic buildings once used in the 1930s as barracks for the Civilian Conservation Corps crews that built the Blue Ridge Parkway, Buncombe County Commission Chairman David Gantt said. The investment is $1.8 million, and Burial will hire 17 new employees, said Jess Reiser, who founded the brewery with husband Doug Reiser and their brewing partner Tim Gormley. Eventually, the 20-barrel site will begin by producing 10,000 barrels of beer annually and looks to add more capacity as needed, Jess Reiser said.

The brewery will increase its sales area by shipping beer first into Georgia and then into South Carolina, she said. Construction will begin in six to eight weeks, with beer being brewed in spring, she said.

Business will continue as usual at the original Burial site at 40 Collier Ave. in the South Slope brewing district.

"We were looking for farmland (for a brewery) for some time," Jess Reiser said. "That was a hard property to find, and we stumbled upon this one, and it offered some of the same qualities.

Kendra Penland, director of the Asheville Brewers Alliance trade group, believes there is still room for more breweries in Asheville. "If you have a great product and you know how to manage your branding and find your customers, the sky is the limit" she said. "Everyone here is making great beer."

The announcement is the latest in whirlwind of brewery building in Western North Carolina.

During 2015, Wicked Weed and Hi-Wire built production breweries to amp up brewing and distribution of their products. Green Man and Highland Brewing have made multimillion dollar additions to their buildings.

New breweries included Catawba's Asheville brewery on the South Slope. New Belgium Brewing is testing equipment at its $140 million West Asheville brewery and looks to be turning out beer for sale early this year. Sweeten Creek Brewing just opened in South Asheville and breweries under construction include Zebulon Artisan Ales in Weaverville, Bhramari Brewhouse on Asheville's South Slope and Blue Ghost in Fletcher.

In all, there are 40-plus breweries around the mountains, about half of those in Buncombe County and most of those in Asheville. The region is nationally recognized as the eastern U.S. craft beer capital.

Asheville, WNC, Upstate SC breweries: the complete list