From Monday Night:
We have big news. We are building a 2nd brewery focusing on barrel-aged and sour beers. We are building this brewery along one of the largest urban renewal projectsin the country: the BeltLine. We are planting an urban orchard to aid in wild fermentation. We are opening a 2nd tasting room as part of this new development. We hope to be open Summer 2017.
Okay, let’s start at the beginning. The past few years our barrel-aged beers have won numerous awards, ranging from Gold at the Great American Beer Festival for Bourbon Barrel Drafty Kilt, to Silver at the World Beer Cup for Laissez-Faire Cabernet Barrel Wheat Wine. Our barrel program has quickly become an integral part of who we are as a brewery, and it’s also something we’re pretty good at. Unfortunately, we simply don’t have the room at our Westside location to do all the things we want to be able to do.
We started thinking about additional space for barrel-aging, but before we got too far down the road, we realized we needed to approach this potentially large business decision via our stated purpose:
Monday Night Brewing exists to deepen human relationships over some of the best beer in the country.
We can never forget that inviting friends and strangers into the garage to brew on Monday nights is how we got started. The ability to help build and shape community is why we wanted to open a brewery in the first place. With deepening human relationships as the end goal, we realized we needed to add a couple things to our search criteria:
- Space for barrel-aging and souring
- Physical location in an underserved part of Atlanta
- Tasting room as key component of buildout
We ended up finding an amazing spot along the BeltLine’s Southwest corridor, currently under construction and slated to open next summer. We thought long and hard about building in the City again. Frankly, we were courted seriously by other cities in Georgia and other states as well. Ultimately, we love this city and want to help build something great here. We are part of the Lee + White Development (at the corner of Lee St. and White St.), which will be home to other local food producers including Southern Aged Cheese, Doux South Pickles, and Honeysuckle Gelato. As if that wasn’t tantalizing enough, here are some things we have planned for the 22,000 sq ft space (for reference, our current facility is 20,000 sq ft):
- Multiple barrel-aging and souring rooms
- Wild/open fermentation capabilities
- Tasting room with patio along BeltLine
- Orchard (fruits will be used in beer production and will also aid with wild fermentation)
- Dog- and bicycle-friendly outdoor space
- Paintings of dinosaurs
As we now begin the process of planning and buildout, we have started reaching out to the various neighborhoods and organizations operating around us. We obviously want to make sure this new space is economically viable, but we also want to make sure we are building something that enhances and reflects the community that surrounds it. Southwest Atlanta isn’t as developed as the Westside, but it is already home to vibrant communities such as West End and Adair Park. We hope to be a meeting place for these neighbors, to employ these neighbors, and to invest back into the community when possible.
As our plans unfold, we’ll continue to update you on the yet-to-be-named new space. Which leads us to the obvious question – any ideas on what we should call it?
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