The south side of Columbus will be home to a new brewery when Parsons North Brewing Company opens its doors later this year.

The brewery will be headed up by Seth Draeger, who began homebrewing around five years ago. Draeger entered his first homebrew competition at Barley’s in 2015, which he won with his Imperial Stout recipe. After a few years of winning other competitions and receiving encouragement from friends, Draeger decided to pursue what was originally going to be a very small brewery.

“I was looking into doing a very small, half-barrel-a-week project somewhere on the south side when I was approached by Nate [Klein] about opening a much larger operation and now we’re talking about 25 barrels a week,” said Draeger. “It was just the right time with the right people and the right place.”

Klein, Parson North’s co-owner and bar manager, had been in contact with the owners of the East Public project — Brianne DeRolph and Killian McIlroy of Sidecar Creatives, and Blake Compton of Compton Construction — a mixed use development on Parsons Avenue for which they were hoping to find a brewery tenant.

“They wanted to create their own space how they saw mixed use projects working, with a restaurant, a brewery, their offices, and a green space between the buildings where they hope to have events,” said Klein.

Draeger had been wanting to open on the south side because of family ties to the area and to get access to the neighborhood’s superior water source.

“The water supply on that side of town is different than the water supply in most of the rest of Columbus because it comes from an aquifer instead of surface water,” said Draeger. “They use less chemicals in it, there are less chemicals in it from runoff, and it’s more consistent year-round.”

The current construction timeline has the project wrapping up in October, but Draeger and Klein are cautiously hoping to be open anytime before the end of the year.

The 4,700 sq ft building will include around 3,000 sq ft of taproom space, including a west facing covered patio. The indoor taproom space will have standard seating as well as a more cozy lounge area.

Draeger hopes to open with a couple guest taps plus 12 house taps pouring a variety of styles, likely including an imperial stout, a brown ale, a wheat ale, a sour and an IPA.

“I’ve developed about 30 recipes, most of which have come through the local homebrew competition pipeline and gotten a lot of feedback and a lot of awards,” said Draeger. “I like to do IPAs and sours and lighter beers and darker beers and big beers and small beers. I really would like to have something for every beer lover and even people who don’t think they like beer.”

The brewery operation will comprise a 10-barrel brewing system with seven 10-barrel fermenters and two 5-barrel fermenters.

“The smaller tanks will allow me to split batches, like doing one beer with grapefruit and one without, or one beer with vanilla and one without,” said Draeger.

In addition to beer, Draeger plans to produce a root beer and a few hard ciders.

“Instead of approaching [cider] like a consistent manufactured product, we intend on making it more like wine where we honor the type of apple, the terroir of the orchard it comes from and the year’s weather, which all add to the character, which will obviously be a little different in every batch,” said Draeger.

The taproom at Parsons North will also offer cocktails, which they are working with Watershed Distillery to develop, as well as wine and soda from Rambling House alongside Draeger’s root beer.

Parsons North Brewing Company will be located at 685 Parsons Ave.