From Lagunitas Brewing Tony Magee:
The new brewery, Lagunitas #3, initial capacity c.420K bbls, built-out capacity: 1MM bbls, will be in Azusa CA...too cool, me thinks.
It's spittin distance fr the Irwindale Miller Brewery. No State grants, no City money asked. A nice new building already under construction.
Gonna take until early 2017 to get her up and brewing, lotsa work between now and then and we can't wait...! Cheers to the Southland...!
This update from Lagunitas:
Lagunitas Brewery # 3 A few questions answered from the Warlord himself Tony Magee
Why LA?
First, Petaluma can not be expanded further beyond the approx 750k bbls it is currently built out at. At current growth rates it will be at about 85% of that in roughly 18 months or so. Chicago still has plenty of run room but we don't want to ship to the West from Chicago. Secondly, we are doing well with beer lovers in the Southland and the Southwest in general and we want to be closer and more involved with them all in that landscape. Lastly... Mexico is nearby and the future will not be like the past, right?... 
What about the drought in CA?
Lagunitas has been focused on water efficiency in our Petaluma brewery for years. We currently have a 4:1 water usage ratio (4 gallons of water to 1 gallon of finished beer) and are in the middle of implementing a revolutionary new water recycling system designed by Cambrian Innovation. When the system comes online at the end of this year, we will be treating our wastewater to the point where we can re-use it for everything but the beer itself, such as boilers and cleaning cycles. Our beer in Petaluma will still be made with 100% pure Russian River water, but we will not have to use as much fresh water for cleaning and other processes. With the new water system in Petaluma we will be able to reduce our water usage ratio to 2.5:1 (a 40% reduction in water usage). This will make our Petaluma brewery one of the most water efficient breweries in the world. We hope to leverage innovations such as these to build a state of the art brewery in LA that uses as little water as possible. 
What is our water source?
The water at the new brewery will be mountain stream water from the San Gabriel Mountains. Azusa is blessed to be located right at the mouth of this excellent water source. As such they are much less reliant on imported water from Northern California and the Colorado River. The Azusa water supply also matches up nicely with our other water supplies in Petaluma and Chicago enabling us to brew our beers without having to significantly adjust the water.
Will we install an EcoVolt system there as well?
Yes, we could potentially design a brewery with a water use ratio of 2:1 which would be the most water efficient brewery in the world that I know of. Going that route would hedge our water risks.
Will this facility be larger than the other two you already have?
This brewery will be similar in scale to our Chicago brewery, which is a little larger than Petaluma.
Is it being built to produce kegs and bottles exclusively for SoCal or for wider Southwest distribution?
This Brewery will serve LA and the whole Southland, of course, but it is a nice place from which to get fresher beer to the whole Southwest and even the Gulf Coast. I believe there are also about 120 million thirsty folks just across the border to the south of you too...! Someday....we can dream..!!
Will there be a Taproom?
Yes!! Absolutely, yes...that's the most fun part of the whole thing for me, making new friends, hosting non-profit groups, bringing music, sharing the whole thing with other humans, what could be better?
What is the brewery's address?
Awkward, but I don't know the precise address, however it is a new commercial development site immediately west of the San Gabriel River and just north of the Irwindale Miller Brewery.
Are you still planning for more?
The future is promised to no one, but we all can dream...
Update 5 July 2015 from Lagunitas:
Greetings BA'rs.... Lagunitas here. I hope I'm not going to bum anyone out, but here goes...
First, the reason for the Azusa Brewery is because Petaluma has run out of expansion room. We just plunked down the last ten sevenhndredandfiftyfuking-barrel fermenters that the site can manage a couple weeks ago. Like all CA brewers, we are growing in CA and the PacNW too. Chicago is perking along at about 50% capacity and growing, but I don't want to be stupid and diesel beer back west from there. It's inefficient and it's irresponsible. In any case, the eastern part of the U.S. is growing like crazy too, not just for us, for all, so I don't want to make plans that sap LagunitasChicago's potential either. But there's an even bigger element too, and it applies to the Azusa thinking as well, and I'll get to that in a minute.
The post above suggests that we increase our portfolio before we add capacity. That's kind'a funny, actually. Which is the chicken and which is the egg? No capacity, no one-offs. We do make a lot of interesting one-offs, they are not the largest part of our business, if they were they wouldn't be very unique, would they? 835k barrels of one-off? There aren't quite enough of you to quaff all of that.
You all love the part of Craft that is fascinating, unique and unobtainable. So do I, but I also like the business of it all and that part of it is on fire, it is for all craft brewers. You all lit the fire and now soccer moms in Cedar Falls Iowa have found craft beer too. You'd be surprised how much beer they drink! My point is; in the human debate over whether or not better beer should be made and loved and consumed, you have won! But sometimes winning is not as much fun as competing, but that's another conversation, isn't it?
Pundits cheering from the sidelines say Craft will someday be a 20 share of all of beer in the US. That's 40 million barrels. I think they're wrong and I think it because of what is happening to us, an insider's view. I think it'll be a 60 share. That's 120 million barrels. More than even just that, I think the things you and we have birthed here are already going global. There are over 500 craft breweries in the UK alone now. Hundreds and hundreds more open or opening all over the world. I want to present our beers in those distant places alongside those new brewers because they're doing our thing, it's cool and it's exciting for beer lovers, but it is the thing that we do best, so I wanna be there doing it too. Now we're talking about an entire planet. One-hundred-and-twenty-million barrels of U.S. demand considered in a global context quickly becomes 500 million? 700 million? One billion...? I can only guess.
A bunch of us are already going global, lots of breweries ship to parts of the EU and Sweden and Asia and Australia and Brazil and, and, and...even to the far flung Isles of Langerhans. I'm 55 years old a couple of weeks ago and I'm feeling ambitious. Time is running out. At some point one goes from counting up to counting down. Fifty-five isn't even middle age unless one thinks they'll live to 110, which I don't. This is the best time in the last thousand years to be a beer lover and because of that it's the best time in the last thousand years to be a brewer too. The opportunity that was gestated in the U.S .now includes the whole of the habitable human universe: Planet Earth. Wouldn't you be excited to think of your own favorite home-brew recipe being enjoyed by some bugger in Belarus or Lyckklansvandik or CapeTown? It gives me goosebumps and I want more of 'em before they ring the bell.
I have a big plan that I'm working hard on and it would give anyone goosebumps. Maybe that's the part that will bum some out here. Small is indeed beautiful, but even the most lovely infant wants to grow up and learn to drive so that it can engage with the world. We are, all of us beer lovers on both side of the brewing/consumption equation, standing at the edge of a revolution.
Has anyone on this board ever thought about how it is that no US craft brewer sells drop one in Mexico? I've thought about that. A lot. I believe that we will sell Lagunitas in Mexico. I'll need a brewery to brew that beer, and Petaluma has about 18 to 24 months before current situation exhausts it's bandwidth, and I still wanna let Jeremy and his crew make one-offs!
Some serious-minded beer lovers and some brewers have a legitimate idea that growing in a modest way is the 'correct' way. But that is pious thinking if it excludes other approaches to salvation. Small is great and big, if done thoughtfully and without compromise, is beautiful too. Ask any architect. Personally, I like to think of business in the way a pilot thinks about flying. You have only two friends inside the sky: speed and altitude. If you have one or the other you have options. If you have both you are blessed and you are safe. For my sake and the sake of the people who have promised their careers to me I want to keep it high and fast. If you begin to taste thoughtlessness or compromise in my beer then you should judge my thinking. In the meantime I'll try not to let you down.
The water situation is another thing....
We spent four or five months talking to the thinkers behind the state's water strategy, and to our surprise, it actually has one. We learned things we didn't expect, and one thing we learned is that tiny Azusa is pretty special. The Miller plant (the former Lucky Brewery) is there for a reason and we will be too. By the way, the City Manager told me that in the 80's the town of Irwindale somehow annexed the tract that the Miller Brewery sits on (probably a tax issue) and Azusa lost it to their neighbor. The brewery didn't move, the assessment district did. In any case there is sufficient H2O in CA to build another brewery, even a bigger one, and I suspect ours won't be the last.
I hope you read this with a generous spirit and see the things that are happening in Craft from the perspective of a parent watching their young'n riding without training wheels. You all, operating from the demand side, have actually succeeded in bringing better beer to the whole world. Me and all the other forward-looking brewers want to live up to our end of the deal...
And I promise we'll make more one-offs and keep it fun for both of us....
Chairs, BA'rs....
Some updated photos from Tony Magee:
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