(Tampa, FL) – It’s been a while since we compiled some Cigar City Brewing news so here goes…

ADDING CAPACITY

The company continues to forge ahead toward its goal of 60,000 barrels annual capacity by year’s end. Earlier this month, it took on more 120-barrel tanks and has now added seven so far this year with three more to go over the last few months of 2013. Don’t get too excited if you live out of state as Cigar City has said its in-state demand exceeds that capacity.

Up to 30,000 barrels will be brewed this year.

EL CATADOR CLUB

Cigar City just sold out of its 1,500 Catador Club memberships. Florida Beer News recently shed some light on how that went down:

It took 27 minutes to sell 500 memberships to people from outside of Tampa, and five days (Sunday until Thursday) to sell 1,000 memberships to locals via the Cigar City Tasting Room. Now 1,500 people are members of the club; since Catadors get one bottle of five different beers that means 7,500 bottles of Cigar City beer are pre-destined for club members.

At $126 per membership, Cigar City grossed around $189k from the sale.

Update: the first beer released in the series is Forgotten Islands.

NEW BEERS/CIDERS/MEADS

Cigar City’s South Florida sales rep, Phil Palmisano, recently joined the United We Drink podcast last week and shared a few tidbits.

Cigar City Marshal Zhukov’s Imperial Stout was released at the brewery on August 1st and per Palmisano, all 91 cases allocated to that event sold out in one day. Bottles (but no draft) have gone into distribution.

Palmisano said that CCB brewed twice as much Zhukov as it did last year and to look for another run in the coming weeks (unsure what bottle/draft mix will be). Similarly, look for another run of Good Gourd to come out as well.

Cigar City reported on its Facebook page that Cigar City Cider & Mead has released Fight the Power Sour Apple.

Label approval has also come through within the past two months for a slew of beers. To our knowledge, none of these have been released, at least in bottles.