LONGMONT — The first new brewery to open in Longmont since 2008 and the first start-up to open in the city since 1993 is poised for a wintertime launch, now that it’s found a location.

Founders Dan and Jean Ditslear and Mark Lusher and his fiancée, Candace Newcomb, say they plan a mid-December opening for 300 Suns Brewing at 335 First Ave., in a 3,000-square-foot space on the southeast corner of that industrial building.

The space was the first one they looked at, Jean Ditslear said, and after looking at several others around Longmont it’s where they’re ending up.

Light industrial was right for the type of operation they want to have, Dan Ditslear said. They’ll start out with a tasting room but want to add kitchen service and distribution of their beers.

“We’re opening as a tasting room,” Lusher said. “Originally we were going to open as a brewpub but we want to hold off on the kitchen until we can get better established.

Lusher will act as the brewery’s “beersmith,” and Dan Ditslear will be its operations manager.

Dan and Jean Ditslear also will continue to own Red Wall Communications, a Longmont-based marketing and public relations firm.

The Ditslears first met Lusher after he had moved to Longmont in 2007 from Atlanta and had opened up his IT consulting business here. A mutual love of craft beer got them talking about opening a brewery of their own, and they took notice over the years of all of them springing up around the region. They decided there was room for another in Longmont.

“Mark and I went on a guy’s trip to Portland and the whole intent was to go to as many breweries as we could,” Dan Ditslear said. “I think we hit 13.”

The founders announced plans to open earlier this year, and now that they’ve found a spot there’s a lot of work to be done on the bare shell of a space. They’re into the “six figures,” they said, with their plans to add a bar, a cooler, new restrooms, etc. And that’s without the expense of the brewery equipment.

Their seven-barrel system will offer a “mix of modern and traditional ales,” Lusher said. The plan is to have about five standard beers on tap and then rotate in some specialty beers and some collaborations with other brewers. The tasting room will take up about 1,250 square feet of the space.

“We have 40 chairs that we need to refinish,” Jean Ditslear said. “We’re doing as much as we can ourselves.”

Because they’re still waiting on permits, they won’t be pouring any beer at Left Hand Brewing Co.’s Oktoberfest celebration on the 20th and 21st of this month, they said, but 300 Suns will be there selling T-shirts and handing out schwag.

The brewery will be Longmont’s first new one since Oskar Blues, which was already well established by then, moved its headquarters to Longmont in 2008. Left Hand opened — in what was previously a meat packing plant in an industrial area — in 1993.

Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or at tkindelspire@times-call.com.