By the time the truck carrying 2,100 cases of Atwater Brewing Co.'s Dirty Blonde Ale reaches the South by Southwest music and film festival in Austin, Texas, next month, the Detroit-based brewery will be in the final planning stages for construction of an 80,000-square-foot brewing facility there.

Mark Rieth, president and CEO of Atwater Brewing, said the motto for the satellite facility will be: "Brewed in Austin. Born in Detroit."

Rieth said the brewery will cost up to $15 million to build and have the capacity to brew 100,000 barrels of beer. It will open during the first quarter of 2015, he said. A beer barrel is 31 gallons, or a little more than 14 cases.

Atwater is planning a similar brewery in North Carolina to open in late 2015.

The new facilities will alleviate some of the production pressure from the Detroit brewing operation, Rieth said.

"We have eight new markets ready to go as soon as product is available, with another five planned for 2016 and beyond," Rieth said. "The additional operations out of state will allow the Detroit facilities to handle the local markets, which are, and always will be, our main priority."

But Rieth said he wants the brewer to grow in scale enough to become a mega-regional player.

Last year, Reith invested $2 million into the Rivertown brewery in Detroit, at 237 Jos. Campau St., increasing its capacity to 30,000 barrels annually.

In addition, Atwater began producing beer out of, a 70,000-square-foot contract-brewing center at 1401 Abbott St. in Corktown. Atwater will produce 40,000 additional barrels of beer out of the new facility.

This isn't Rieth's first foray into contract brewing. Atwater was contracted to brew Kid Rock's Bad Ass Beer for concerts at

When Rieth took over Atwater in 2005, it produced 800 barrels of beer. This year, Atwater is on pace to produce about 70,000 barrels — generating revenue of up to $10 million.

By the end of 2015, Reith said the brewery is expected to produce 100,000 barrels of beer. By 2018, Rieth said, Atwater could produce more than 250,000 barrels.

Paul Gatza, director of the Boulder, Colo.-based, a nonprofit trade organization, said one of the biggest challenges of expanding is coming up with enough capital to make an impact.

"Oftentimes when companies go national, they try to get to as many states as quickly as they can, but they don't go very deep in markets," he said. "To do that, you need infrastructure that can support it. And it helps to have representatives in the new market to spread the word."

In addition to infrastructure, Gatza said, an expanding brewery needs to find the right wholesaler that can make or break a brand entering a new territory.

"You need expertise in the area of contracting, evaluating and figuring out the local wholesalers' footprints — which is not always an easy thing," Gatza said. "If you blow a wholesaler decision, you are screwed in a market, which means your beer could sit in a warehouse while others get crucial shelf space."

Atwater isn't the only Michigan brewer with expansion in the hopper, but each has a unique business model in mind based on the popularity of certain products.

Scott Newman-Bale, CFO of Elk Rapids-based, said his brewery, known for its eclectic flavors like Key Lime Pie and Huma Lupa Licious, is also expanding.

Newman-Bale said Short's is investing $6 million to expand its production facility, increasing total output to 60,000 barrels from 39,000.

In 2013, Short's produced 23,600 barrels of beer, generating revenue of $8.4 million.

But, unlike Atwater, instead of using the new facility for a national push, Short's is doubling down on Michigan, Newman-Bale said.

"We are the antithesis of expanding in that we only want to be a Michigan brewery," he said. "I think it allows us to keep our focus on product rather than trying to meet sales goals."

Newman-Bale said there is plenty of room for growth in-state.

"The beauty of craft breweries is the individual characters that make up the industry," he said. "At some point, the story behind the product gets harder to portray on a broader scale."

Scott LePage, adviser for his parents', said the Birmingham brewery for now is focused on mastering Michigan before it expands out of state. (The LePages also built The District Lofts next door towhich they also own with partners.)

"A lot of breweries can't even supply the local market, and yet you'll see them pouring beer in Brooklyn," LePage said. "We want to do it right locally than go even further into the state before we look out of market."

But LePage said demand is so high for the Griffin Claw beers, especially for its Norm's Raggedy Ass India Pale Ale, that the brewery added a third shift and is operating at maximum capacity.

The brewery, which opened in April 2013, is slated to produce about 15,000 barrels of beer in its first full year of production.

"We could make just our IPA full time and not keep up," LePage said. "Then we are entering six other beers in the marketplace. Finding the balance of how much to brew of what is a difficult thing."

But all that demand means one thing: expansion.

"Instead of small growth, we might just want to go big, and that is something we are pursuing," he said.