(Lewiston, ME) – Baxter Brewing Co. sent out a lengthy newsletter on Monday highlighting accomplishments from 2012 and giving a preview of 2013. Here’s most of the newsletter (excerpted)…

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Late in the spring, we released the first of three new beers – our new rotating seasonal beer program – which would come out this year: Celsius Summer Ale. Named by Esquire Magazine as one of the “8 Best Hard-to-Find Summer Ales”, Celsius came-and-went before any of us knew what had happened. But it was a very exciting time around the brewery, as Celsius was the first beer we released commercially which had been concocted by our new Head Brewer, Ben Low, who joined the Baxter team in November, 2011.

In early August, just before we released our fall seasonal, Hayride Autumn Ale, we came to an agreement with Ben for him to stay on with Baxter permanently. A very special moment for me personally, as Ben has been (and continues to be) an incredible mentor, coworker and friend. The timing was perfect, because around the same time, our management team began the research and planning for our 2013 expansion. Simultaneously, due to a recent law change in Maine, we began selling pints and flights of our commercial and small batch/experimental beers in our on-site tasting room.

Lastly, in early October we held a press conference to announce the final details of our upcoming expansion – one which, by the time its finished in early 2014, will increase our total capacity by 400% from where it is today (or to just over one million gallons annually). A few weeks later, we released the third and final seasonal beer we would debut in 2012 – Phantom Punch Winter Stout; our first dark beer, a Foreign Extra Stout brewed with 200 lbs of organic cocoa nibs and 0.5 lbs of vanilla beans in every batch – and MaineBiz named me to this year’s “Next List” of 20 people who will shape the future of Maine’s economy.

It’s been an incredibly busy year, production-wise, too. We will finish up 2012 by brewing 8,000 barrels of beer (a 63% increase over last year’s production) and have been producing “at capacity” since day one. But that still only accounts for about 30% of the total orders placed by our distributors for the year, and distribution only in Maine and Massachusetts (despite the fact that we’d hoped to be able to ship to New Hampshire this year too). So needless to say, we’re all VERY excited for the expansion.

A Look Ahead at 2013

While bits and pieces of expansion work have already begun, the actual digging of our new space at The Bates Mill and most of the really visual work will begin in earnest after the first of the year (so please stop by and check out the construction progress throughout the first quarter; it’s going to make for some exciting tours). And the first three of our six total new 240 barrel (~7,500 gallons) fermenters will arrive from the manufacturer in Syracuse, NY the first week of March, doubling our current capacity.

Simultaneously, our second canning line and 60 barrel brite tanks will both arrive from Canada. And construction will be complete on our 2,500 sq ft of office space on the second floor directly above the brewhouse, and 7,500 sq ft of offsite storage near the Turnpike exit in Lewiston.

From there, we’ll plunge head-first into summer production, with the re-release of Celsius, and we plan to triple production in September of 2013 (around the time that Hayride appears again). I hope that with that tripling we will also, finally, begin distribution across the state of New Hampshire, with Vermont distribution to follow (either in late 2013 or early 2014, but I’m getting ahead of myself). And don’t forget Phantom Punch, which will be back again next year, sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving.