Last Wednesday morning, before leaving town, I stopped over at 10 Barrel Brewing‘s groundbreaking ceremony for their new 50-barrel brewhouse in northeast Bend: they have been experiencing phenomenal growth over the past several years and are needing to expand. The ceremony began (roughly) at 9am, but instead of the traditional shovel turning the earth they decided to commemorate the moment by breaking open a barrel full of beer.

Of course, beer was served as well: they had a five gallon keg of India Summer Ale on hand and there was a nice turnout of folks to witness the event, including our local TV news (you can watch that story online here).

I had a chance to talk to some of the principals involved (including owner Chris Cox and brewer Jimmy Seifert) and picked up a few tidbits:

• They plan to have the new facility built out in 120 days, and were planning on having concrete pouring within a week (which would be this week sometime).
• They also plan to have beer being brewed by the first of January. Test batches will begin (for calibrating to the new larger system) sometime in November or December, most likely.
• Once the 50-barrel production facility is complete and brewing, they will move their current 10-barrel facility over and set that up (which is also about the time that Tonya Cornett from Bend Brewing will start with 10 Barrel).
• The plan is for the new facility to be primarily a production facility, but at some point they will look at adding a tasting room as well.
• And yes, the Peanut Butter and Jelly beer may well make an appearance in the future. (I had to bug Jimmy about this.)

And finally, some images for your enjoyment: