(Lawrence, KS) – BeerPulse caught up with Free State Brewing Head Brewer, Steve Bradt, to learn a bit more about the company’s expansion…

1) What was production for 2011?

Production at the packaging brewery (that’s ESB for East Side Brewery) was just over 6,000 bbls in 2011. That was combined with pub production of almost 2,000 bbls to give us 8,000 bbls ttl, up from about 7,000 combined the year before.

2) What was functional capacity prior to the beginning of this expansion?

Functional capacity at the ESB is around 7,000 bbls at a stretch. One limitation is that two of our seasonals, including our extremely popular Octoberfest are lagers and they tie up a lot of fermentation space.

3) When did this expansion start and what does it entail? Extra space, new tanks, etc.

We started renovating the other half of the building we’re in last month, so far just painting and insulation work. There’s quite a bit of plumbing and electrical to be done before we’re ready to install any new equipment. The first thing installed will be a fully refurbished 40/10 bottling line from Germany. That should enable us to roughly triple our current bottling speeds. We’ll also be doubling our cold storage space. We hope to see that stage of the project completed by mid to late summer. The next stage will be to decommission the old bottling line and use that space to expand our cellar space with more fermenters and bright tank capacity. With luck, we can start installing some additional tanks by late fall.

4) What will functional capacity be at the end of the expansion and when is it expected to be completed?

That’s still not fully determined, the focus right now is to get the space ready for more tanks so we can get back to “plug and play”. I expect to add a couple more 70 bbl fermenters pretty quickly along with more bright space to get us another 30% or so. We’ll have the space to grow pretty significantly from there as we need to. So the short version is, we probably won’t see a big capacity jump for most of this year but we should really be able to start spreading our wings in 2013.

5) Where outside of KS are Free State beers available & where will you guys be looking to expand distribution to after the expansion?

Currently we are available across all of Kansas and in the Kansas City, MO metro area. Our focus moving forward will be to expand our offerings in Kansas and increase our presence in the Missouri market, where we’ve been well received but haven’t had the capacity to grow like we or they would like us to. We’ve also seen strong interest in our beers from Nebraska markets and I think that is likely to be the next direction we move. That said, our priority has always been to make sure we are serving and supporting the markets we’re in before we launch into new areas.

6) A craftbeer.com interview said you would do large format bottles when this is done. Assuming that is still the case, what kind of beers do you hope to do?

I see the larger format as being a great vehicle for smaller production specialty beers. Brews that we can’t, or don’t really want to make in high volumes, but that allow our brewers to step outside the box a bit and show what kinds of special things they can create. We were talking about it a little yesterday and then last night I was reading Harpoon’s Rich Doyle’s comments about steak vs. sizzle. I see our flagship brands and seasonals as the steak and the kinds of beers we’ll put in larger format packages as the sizzle.