Brewery projects never happen as quickly as you think (or want) them to happen, but I’m not sure that there’s been one here in Cincinnati that has taken as long as Alexandria Brewing Company.  It seems like Alexandria’s owner, Andy Reynolds, has had every obstacle thrown in his way at this point (knock on wood), and yet he has kept plugging away at the project.  The great news is that they are closer to an opening now than ever before and have some great updates that they’ve recently shared with their Kickstarter backers.

Moving Into A Location

They had one location almost nailed down until the very last minute when some unseen issues popped up (septic system stuff…) that would have cost more than would have been worth it to keep going with the space.  The situation forced them into turning their sights to other places in Alexandria.

It’s all official now, though, Alexandria has found a home at 7926 Alexandria Pike.  Unless you live there, or drive through really frequently it won’t mean much, but the location is where the former ‘Skip N Flip’ was.  A large, wide open space that offers up a blank canvas for the Alexandria team to create a killer taproom experience.

The Brewhouse Is On Order

In addition to finally having a space to call home, Alexandria Brewing finally got to order the biggest part of the puzzle, their brewhouse.  They went with DME (Diversified Metal Engineering) to get a 5 barrel system alongside six 5 bbl fermenters and one 5 bbl bright tank.

Diversified Metal Engineering is a fantastic company, and you might know their work if you’ve ever had a pint at Taft’s Ale House (I can’t imagine you are a regular reader of this blog, and have yet to grab dinner and a beer at Taft’s).

Alexandria went with a crazy cool system, which enables them to do all kinds of nerdy step mashing, and decoction and all sorts of things I won’t even pretend to understand completely… and they’re already planning the first expansion of their fermentation capacity within the first 6 to 12 months.  I think the plan is to have plenty of new beers rolling through on a regular basis, and you’ll find some really great stuff that honors both sides of beer: the super traditional, and the modern twists that have made craft beer explode.

The Opening Date

You know how this works by now – who the hell knows when things will actually all happen.  They are whispering a tentative date of spring 2018, and I hear they are shooting pretty hard to have beer by my birthday in March.  As with any brewery project, though… it’s hard to nail something down and be accurate when you’re at this stage of the game.

If you want more information as it develops, I’ll of course be updating you here (or trying as hard as I can to keep you caught up) but you can always follow Alexandria Brewing Company on all your favorite social media channels too.  If that’s not enough I’ll be making my way down to the fine city of Alexandria to record a live episode of Cincy Brewcast soon, and it should “air” on iTunes the morning of Monday 10/23.  If you watch closely, I might even pop in on Facebook or Periscope while I’m down there to give you a sneak peek at the space as it’s under construction.

Still not good enough?  I’ll have some more details about the event coming soon, but the Big Cis event is being planned right now for 11/11 to remember Mike Cisneros, my late co-host on the brewcast and dear friend.  Andy from Alexandria was one of the collaborators on the beer, and will be at the event, so you can bug him in person about his opening date then.

As always – stay tuned for more!

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