The renovation of this historic, beautiful space will enable us to triple our production and let us keep up with the rise in demand for our beer. At minimum, we plan to invest $8 million into building a 36,000-square-foot brewery and 4,000 square feet of office space. This will allow us to create 25 new jobs in the Athens community over the next 5 years, as well as revitalize a property that is being underused.

The brewery will be centered around an 85 barrel 4-vessel Steinecker brewhouse, and will include enough fermentation capacity to brew 50,000 barrels in our new brewery on day 1. We are building in plenty of room to grow as well with significantly more cellar space and room for an additional 85-bbl 4-vessel brewhouse. We will be investing a quarter of a million dollars into our laboratory, installing a 240 can-per-minute 24-head Krones canning line, a reverse osmosis skid, advanced milling system, and many other advanced pieces of equipment to ensure that we can continue to make the highest quality beer for our customers.

Southern Mill is a former cotton mill that originally opened in 1900, but has not been operational since the 1990s. While our brewery will reuse a portion of the space, another section is being developed a residential and commercial property separate from ours. We’re excited to be a part of this innovative reuse of a great property in a booming part of the Athens community.