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December 6, 2016

Rockland beer brewer to pump up production

IMAGE \ Pixabay

Rock Harbor Brewing of Rockland has bought a vacant building along Route 1 to scale up its business from a tiny four-barrel operation to a 15-barrel system to meet demand, its owner said.

“We’re not making enough beer to keep up right now,” Dan Pease, founder and owner of the brewery and pub, told the Bangor Daily News. He told the newspaper he expects production to jump to 2,000 barrels per year from the current 165 barrels.

The move comes after Pease saw supplies of his nine staple beers run low during the busy summer tourism season. Limited capacity also kept him from exploring other markets, such as bars in Bangor or Portland.

He’ll move from a small location on Main Street to a warehouse and showroom formerly occupied by Belfast’s Mathews Brothers. Pease also plans to build a tasting room, the newspaper said. The larger brewing system will be built by Tigpro, a Portland-based stainless steel fabricator that works with many Maine brewers, according to the BDN.

Pease plans for a June opening to tap the summer tourism rush.

Pease employs 15 to 20 people at the pub, but the newspaper said he expects to hire 10 more people to make beer within two years of completing the expansion.

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