USA, KY: Country Boy Brewing opens the doors of its second location in Georgetown

Less than two weeks after celebrating the five-year anniversary of its Lexington location, Country Boy Brewing officially has opened the doors on its new, much larger Georgetown location, Smiley Pete reported on February 15.

The new facility – located at 108 Corporate Drive and launched on February 17 - includes a partly covered 5,000-square-foot patio, a 6-acre campus (with first right of refusal on another 4 acres), three automatic glass garage doors, a private room, 36 taps and a 4,000-square-foot tap room.

The tap room is more than four times larger than Country Boy’s 900-square-foot Lexington location. All totaled, the Georgetown location covers more than 23,000-square-feet and cost $7 million to make.

“It’s a unique experience in the craft beer scene to be able to sit here and you’re looking at old barns and farmland and bluegrass,” said co-owner and brand manager Daniel “D.H.” Harrison, who owns Country Boy with Jeff Beagle, Nathan Coppage and Evan Coppage.

According to Harrison, who grew up nearby, Georgetown’s recent and projected growth made it an ideal setting for a second location.

“Scott County is the fastest-growing county in the state,” said Harrison. “A lot of stuff happening. I think we’re in a good spot. It’s a different market than Lexington, a different city than Lexington, but we’re coming up.”

On the production side of things, the new facility has a 50-barrel brewing system compared to a 10-barrel system in Lexington. One barrel amounts to 31 gallons, so each brewing session in the Georgetown location can produce more than 1,500 gallons of beer.

Their 200-barrel fermenter, which produces about 68,000 beers, is currently the largest beer fermenter in the state of Kentucky. The production section at the new facility won’t be finished until April.

Other production amenities the space has afforded them include a grain silo, forklift ramps, loading docks and areas for canning, kegging and packaging.

The tap room bar is made of Corten steel, with concrete corners and 2½ inch thick Kentucky walnut slabs on top.

“It’s going to be an art piece at the end of the day,” said Harrison.

The steel on the bar has what Harrison calls “controlled rust” – which was created by covering slabs with salt and muriatic acid and placing them on a hillside for 4 days, giving them a rusty finish without destroying the steel.

The tap tower, which holds 24 taps, is a 750-pound Micromatic stainless steel pipe. The other 12 taps in the facility are located at a second bar in the tap room and in the private room, which can hold about 25-30 people.

They also built kitchen space with an ordering window facing the tap room in case they want to introduce a food element down the road.

Glass windows in the tap room allow for customers to see into the brewery section. Spent grain, which ultimately goes to farmers to feed livestock, can be seen pouring out of the nearest tank.

Though a lot of time and energy was spent on the tap room, the primary purpose for the new facility is for production and distribution. Country Boy’s plan for the year is to get its four core beers out into the market in cans.

Those four beers are Cougar Bait, an American blonde ale that already is being canned and distributed; Shotgun Wedding, a vanilla brown ale that they’ve started canning but haven’t distributed much of yet; Halfway Home, a pale ale; and Cliffjumper, an India Pale Ale.

Country Boy’s immediate focus is to get these beers out into the market in Lexington, Louisville and all throughout Kentucky.

According to Harrison, tourism will play a big role in Country Boy Georgetown’s success, and they hope to one day have a brown road sign nudging visitors in their direction, whether they’re coming from the horse park, Toyota, Old Friends Farm or anywhere else.

“Alcohol tourism is at an all-time high, so we’re going to make sure we take advantage of that,” said Harrison.

With the expansion, the role of the Lexington brewery will change moving forward. The tap room will remain unchanged, but the production side will turn into what Harrison refers to as a playground brewery, where brewers can focus on more experimental recipes like sours, ciders and beers with off-centered ingredients.

“When we started, we were all home brewers at heart,” said Harrison. “We love the core brands, but making experimental stuff is where you get to exercise your creativity, try some out of the box kind of stuff, and that’s what the brewers enjoy doing.”

Craft breweries are still at about 5 percent market share, meaning roughly 95 out of 100 beers consumed in the state are still the Miller, Coors and Anheuser-Busch’s of the world, which means there’s still plenty of non-craft beer drinkers to appeal to in the market.

To Harrison, saying you don’t like craft beer is like saying you don’t like sandwiches. It’s such a broad term and there are so many different types, that there has to be at least one out there for everybody, and the folks at Country Boy would like to help you find it.

“Maybe you just haven’t had something you like yet,” said Harrison.

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