FuzzyBrew

A new Nashville brewery will open its doors this year that will focus on crafting Belgian-inspired ales.

The Black Abbey Brewing Company, founded by Carl Meier, will open an 11,000-square-foot facility with a brewery and tasting room in South Nashville at 2952 Sidco Drive.

For more information, “like” The Black Abbey Brewing Company on Facebook or follow Meier on Twitter @BlackAbbeyCarl. And here’s a press release issued this week with more details:

The Black Abbey Brewing Company to open in Nashville
Brewery to locate in south Nashville’s “untapped” market

NASHVILLE, TENN. — March 19, 2013 —A new brewery will open its doors in Nashville later this year.

The Black Abbey Brewing Company will locate its production facility and tasting room at 2952 Sidco
Drive in south Nashville. The 11,000-square-foot facility will include brewing equipment as well as a tasting room which will serve as a retail outlet for beer and other merchandise.

“We have a portfolio of unique and delicious beer that we are excited to deliver to the Greater Nashville market,” Founder Carl Meier said.

The Black Abbey’s brand is thoughtfully influenced by the story of Martin Luther, father of the protestant reformation. The company creates Belgian-inspired ales that are creative, accessible and unique, relying on 600 years of brewing tradition, starting with styles that Martin Luther himself might have enjoyed. The tagline for its unique line of craft beers is, appropriately, “Created. Not Made.”

“Luther and his wife brewed beer for the community surrounding Wittenberg Germany, creating an
opportunity for fellowship around good conversation and great beer,” Meier explained. “We love the idea of bringing people together and promoting community through common interests. We want our tasting room to be come a ‘Fellowship Hall’ — a place where people can get to know one another, and get to know us and our personable beers.”

The Black Abbey Brewing Co. was founded in 2011. It has had a presence in regional beer festivals, national competitions and social media for nearly two years. Meier expects to begin construction this week and production in the third quarter of 2013.

New tanks arrived at Blackstone Brewing Company this week that will allow the Nashville craft brewery to increase capacity by 60 percent.

Blackstone received three new tanks (two fermentation and one bright tank) with nominal capacity of 120 barrels each. They were fabricated by the W.M. Sprinkman Corp. in Elroy, Wisconsin.

Here’s more from Blackstone:

Our current fermentation capacity is 390 barrels and this will increase that by about 60% to 630 barrels. Our annual capacity will increase from 10,000 barrels to 16,000 barrels. For 2013 we will use this capacity to support the growth of our core brands, four seasonal brands and one high gravity brand in the existing markets. In addition we will bring out new brands, HopJack IPA in and a new high gravity brand in early spring. Assuming that we can satisfy our current markets, we plan to expand our brands to the remaining Tennessee markets first and then to limited markets in Kentucky and Alabama. Our capacity will also be used to support existing contract brewing arrangements. Within the next two months we will place an order for two additional tanks for delivery in the summer of 2013 which will boost our fermentation capacity to 750 barrels giving us annual capacity of 19,000 barrels.

In October, Blackstone celebrated a milestone by capping its one millionth bottle since opening a bottling line in the summer of 2011.

Blackstone is growing! This is #1 of 3 new tanks going in today. That means 60% more beer can be brewed for you! twitter.com/BlackstoneBrew…

— Blackstone Brewery (@BlackstoneBrew) December 21, 2012

Tennessee Brew Works, which is coming to Nashville in the spring of 2013, finally has a home.

Founders Garr Schwartz and Christian Spears announced today that their production brewery will be located at 809 Ewing Avenue in downtown Nashville, close to Yazoo Brewing Company and Jackalope Brewing Co.

The 21,000-square-foot building was an old printing company, with 20- to 24-foot ceilings throughout. The brewery will feature a roughly 3,000-square-foot taproom.

We’re very excited about the location, which has plenty of room for production and a nice tasting room!” Schwartz and Spears wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “Lots of planning and hard work behind and ahead of us! We’re looking forward to serving you ‘Finely Tuned Craft Beers’ this Spring. We thank you for your support!”

Schwartz and Spears hope to open Tennessee Brew Works by April. The brewery will initially distribute in Nashville, but the founders plan to ultimately distribute statewide, including a presence in Memphis.

Follow Tennessee Brew Works’ progress on Facebook or on Twitter.

For the craft beer drinker who likes to try beers on the wild side, there was some exciting news that came out of Nashville Wednesday.

Yazoo Brewing Company brewmaster Linus Hall announced the introduction of “Embrace the Funk,” a new series of small-batch wild and sour ales.

The project is a collaboration with Nashville area brewer and beer blogger Brandon Jones, who previously teamed up with Yazoo in 2009.

Brandon and I will be working on a range of wild, soured ales that we will release in small batches as we go forward.  Your first chance to taste our creations will come at the 12th South Winter Warmer, with a beer we are calling “Wild Child”.  Its base beer was our Sue, but it has been aging for a good while in a special barrel inoculated with a brett yeast strain and some dark sour cherries.  If you don’t get to taste this beer at the festival, don’t worry – we will be releasing some big bottles of it soon afterwards. We’ve also started on a couple of other beers, but until they age we won’t know how they are going to turn out. [source]

 Jones has even more details about the collaboration on his website here.

Can’t wait to try these beers…