Belmont Fermenttorium poster by State-of-the-art Times.
Four-Year-Elderly Independent Craft Brewery and Coffee Roaster in San Diego Modern times announced ambitious plans to enter the Portland, Oregon market with a fresh brewing facility, tasting room and coffee roastery.
In a company blog post last Friday, State-of-the-art Times founder and CEO Jacob McKean said the expansion to Portland has long been something of an open secret among the State-of-the-art Times staff. The company is also technically partially employee-owned through Agreement on 30 percent shareholding.
“Even before we distributed in Portland, we made plans to brew a beer together there, both to deepen our relationships with brewers we admire and to give ourselves a business reason to visit the city we love,” McKean wrote.
State-of-the-art Times Point Loma, San Diego coffee shop, brewery and tasting room. Photo by State-of-the-art Times.
Plans to move to Portland were accelerated when Mike Wright, owner Commons Brewery On SE Belmont and SE 7th Ave. in Portlandcontacted McKean, offering him a lease on 10,000 square feet of Commons space, from which the brewery would be relocated, according to McKean.
State-of-the-art Times will lease the building starting Jan. 1, 2018, calling the brewing facility the Belmont Fermentorium. McKean said they plan to close it for about a month to install fresh equipment and expand the tasting room, expecting to produce about 7,000 barrels in the first year for wholesale customers in the Pacific Northwest.
Importantly for its coffee production needs, the company also leased an adjacent 10,000-square-foot building at 630 SE Belmont, which McKean described as a shell building that, after about a year of buildout, will house packaging equipment and beer canning tanks, as well as a roastery and a coffee shop, “with full food preparation equipment,” McKean said.
