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Brooklyn Brewery is considering a new brewery site in Orange County.

(Brooklyn Brewery)

Brooklyn Brewery, one of the largest and best known craft beer makers in the United States, has its sights set on building an $80 million plant at the Stewart Industrial Park near Newburgh, Orange County.

Brooklyn, which currently has most of its beer brewed under contract at the F.X. Matt (Saranac) Brewing Co. in Utica, would lease at least 250,000 square feet of space if the industrial park's owners agree to the plan, the Time Herald-Record reported.

Brooklyn has built a strong reputation in the craft beer world since launching its first two beers, Brooklyn Lager and Brooklyn Brown Ale, in the late 1980s. Initially, all its beer was brewed under contract by other brewers, notably the Matt brewery in Utica.

It opened its own brewery in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 1996. As recently as 2014, it was making about 80,000 barrels a year in Williamsburg and 130,000 a year in Utica.

It has been looking for bigger space nearer to New York for some time. At one point, it seemed to be locking in on a site on the west shore of Staten Island. The Staten Island Advance reported last month that the state may have been trying to lure the brewery to an "Upstate" site.

Brooklyn has also expanded much of its market overseas, and has built a brewery in Stockholm, Sweden.

Don Cazentre writes about food, beverages, restaurants and bars for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact him by email, on Twitter, at Google+ or via Facebook.