Terrace’s first brewery is on course to open on schedule, thanks to the on-time arrival of some heavy equipment earlier this month.
A 53-foot flatbed truck arrived from California Oct. 9, on it the brewery’s three shiny new fermentors and one bright tank – the tank where the beer settles and matures – equipment that now fills the 2,600 square foot space.
“It’s exciting,” said Sherwood Mountain Brewery owner Darryl Tucker Oct. 9 at the brewery-in-progress location in the former Out Spoke’n Bike & Sport location on Hwy16 West.
He and business partner Linda Parker have been busy transforming the space over the summer, and with the fermentors arriving on schedule, the team now moves to the next phase on the way to being a full-fledged brewery with tasting room, beer to go, and local restaurants carrying their draft on tap.
Sherwood Mountain will be Terrace’s first brewery, and Tucker, anticipating demand, has opted to “go big” –producing 80,000 litres of beer in the first year of operation with plans to expand to 200,000 litres a year.
Eventually, he’d like to see the beer sold in places beyond northwest B.C.
The business timeline calls for Sherwood to be in operation enough so that patrons will be able to take home beer for Christmas – something Tucker says is still very much the case.