Thirty-two years in, and Alaskan Brewing Co. is still expanding.<\/p>\n
The brewery which put Alaska beer on the map celebrated the grand opening of its new taproom Saturday on the brewery’s Lemon Creek campus.<\/p>\n
Beer lovers flooded the space, and grabbed pints with friends during the afternoon event. Twenty taps line the wall below a blue, black and green mural depicting the northern lights over Mendenhall Glacier.<\/p>\n
[Amid craft beer shuffle, Alaskan vows to stay put<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n With 30-foot high ceilings, an open floor plan, and a location on the way to Costco, the new Alaskan taproom can better serve its primary purpose, said Communications Manager Andy Kline: sharing the brewery’s story through its ales, stouts and porters.<\/p>\n The old Shaune Drive taproom, located just a block away from the new one, was a bit smaller than the new taproom, Kline said, and a funky floor plan meant most of the space wasn’t well-used.<\/p>\n When tour groups dropped by in the summer, they’d quickly fill up the old taproom. There also wasn’t enough space to pour all Alaskan’s beer styles, Kline said.<\/p>\n “Our tasting room as existing was kind of fine for the winter, but in summer, you couldn’t walk,” Kline said.<\/p>\n Moving from just a handful to 20 taps means Alaskan can pour all of its experimental, small batch and seasonal beers at once. Back behind the new taproom, Kline showed off a walk-in refrigerator which houses its kegs.<\/p>\n Red lines lead from some of about 40 kegs. The new system is a big upgrade, Kline said.<\/p>\n “The old tasting room, we were essentially working out of kegerators. It was kind of like glorified home units. This is like ‘OK, finally,’” Kline said.<\/p>\n Alaskan has recently expanded facilities on either side of its beer production area. On the west side of the property, it negotiated the purchase of four lots<\/a> previously owned by the City and Borough of Juneau. On its east side, the old Anchor Electric Building serves as the location for the new taproom. Alaskan closed a deal to purchase<\/a> the Anchor building this spring.<\/p>\n Both of those purchases were largely made out of opportunity, Kline said. Space is at a premium in Juneau, and Alaskan knew both of these adjacent properties might be their only chance to secure more next-door room, Kline said.<\/p>\n Alaskan, like other alcohol manufacturers in Alaska, is limited in how many ounces of beer it can serve to customers on a given day. Customers are allowed to drink 36 ounces. Beer sold for off-site consumption is limited to 5 gallons. The new taproom is open 11 a.m.-7 p.m.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 and kgullufsen@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @KevinGullufsen.<\/b><\/p>\n Thirty-two years in, and Alaskan Brewing Co. is still expanding. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":38021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[208,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-38020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","tag-business","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38020"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=38020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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