Dust Bowl owners break ground on expanded brewery in Turlock

BY PATTY GUERRA

04/08/2015

TURLOCK

If all goes according to plan, in a little more than eight months, visitors will be able to stop in at the Dust Bowl brewery for a tour, a tasting and a snack. And at some later point, they might attend a wedding, a company gathering or a private party there.

On Wednesday, the owners of Dust Bowl – Brett and Karen Tate and Brett and Camy Honoré – hosted a ceremony to commemorate the beginning of construction on a $12.5 million, 30,000-square foot brewery on Fulkerth Road just west of Highway 99.

“This all started in 2008,” said Brett Tate, a longtime high school basketball coach. Dust Bowl started as a microbrewery with two beers. In 2011, Tate and Brett Honoré opened the Tap Room downtown. The eatery, which has been popular since it opened, serves as a testing ground for new brews, as well as a restaurant.

Tate said they are bringing the same kind of attitude to the new project.

“It’s an evolution,” he said, adding that customers will help shape the future of the business. When it opens, which Tate said he hopes will be by January, the brewery will be capable of producing 17,000 to 20,000 barrels of beer per year. That’s up from 5,000 at the present, 2,100-square-foot facility on Spengler Way.

And that’s only the beginning. At full build-out, the brewery will be capable of producing up to 100,000 barrels each year.

Michelle Peterson, who works in public relations for Dust Bowl, said the increased capacity will allow the beer to get into more markets. Initially, that will mean Southern California, the coast and the South San Francisco Bay Area. Then, she said, the next frontier will be the Pacific Northwest, already a popular craft beer area.

Peterson said the new tasting room is envisioned as a draw from a wide area. “Beer tasting is kind of like wine tasting of the 1990s,” she said. “People will drive to do it.”

Peterson noted that the Tap Room, on West Main Street, already draws 30 percent of its business from outside the 209 area code. Tate and Honoré don’t plan to abandon downtown; Tate said the Tap Room will remain open after the new facility is complete.

“We love downtown,” he said.

A few dozen people, including city employees and representatives of the bank working with Dust Bowl, attended Wednesday’s ceremony, which was put off by stormy weather from its originally planned date of Tuesday – coincidentally, National Beer Day.

Tate handled most of the speaking, but Honoré had one succinct suggestion as the two couples wielded the gold-painted shovels used in the ceremony:

“Drink more beer.”

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/news/local/turlock/article17903240.html#storylink=cpy