Two Roads To Build Second Brewing Facility & Tasting Room

Two Roads Brewing of Stratford has announced their plans to add a 25,000 square foot expansion to their brewery specifically to create sour and barrel-aged beers. Situated on 2.5 acres of newly acquired land adjoining the existing brewery's hop yard and music venue, the brewhouse will have a 120-person capacity tasting room overlooking both the brewing operations, and a wetlands preserve. 

Sour beers such as Framboise Noir Black Raspberry Lambic, Urban Funk Wild Ale made with yeast from Superstorm Sandy, and Worker’s Stomp White Wine Barrel-Aged Saison will see increased production, along with Hexotic Tropical Lambic, which won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado this October. Hexotic spends 28 months in oak, and was fermented with "Brett C" (brettanomyces clausenii). Six different types of fruit were added during fermentation, including orange, passion fruit, mangosteen, soursop (aka gaunabana), guava, and mango.

Other existing beers, such as Road 2 Rouen Franco-Belgian wild IPA , should become more available, and the plan is to use the facility to launch new styles every year.  

The $12 million facility will feature a 50bbl. capacity brewhouse, wooden vat fermenters called foudres or foeders, a coolship, and storage for 2,000 wood barrels

"We'll have a mixed bag of barrels," Two Roads brewmaster Phil Markowski told CTBites. "We're going to continue to produce barrel aged beers like Igor's Dream and Conntucky Lightnin' there, but we'll use spirits and wines barrels - who knows what we'll think to do in the future? For traditional sours we'll use neutral barrels which have been soaked to remove previous traces, and we'll be incorporating many more which will include the spirit base." 

Markowski has been extensively involved in designing a brewing space and visitor area with Neil Hauck architects of Stamford. 

"We've put emphasis on both the exterior design, and the interior working and observing spaces," he said. "People will get a chance to see beer quietly sleeping in barrels and foudres, to active brewing, and the outside." 

The tasting room will focus exclusively on beers made in the new facility.Plans are to break ground in early 2017 and open by or before early 2018.