USA: Capital Brewery finishes $1.3 million expansion project

Capital Brewery said Tuesday that it has completed a $1.3 million expansion project, Wisconsin State Journal published April 3. It also will use a different brewery to bottle and package its products.

The Middleton craft brewer, which specializes in German- style lagers, had been using Joseph Huber Brewing Co. (now Minhas Craft Brewery) in Monroe since 2000 to bottle and package its beer, but it will switch to the Stevens Point Brewery effective May 1. That brewery, in Stevens Point in central Wisconsin, is celebrating 150 years of brewing this year. Capital used Point for packaging from 1989 to 1999.

The expansion project included the addition of six, 130- barrel fermentation tanks that will be used primarily for Island Wheat Ale, a beer that starts in the wheat fields of Door County's Washington Island, and is the brewery's top-selling beer.

The tanks, housed in a 2,000- square-foot addition that includes 20-foot tall-windows, will increase the brewery's annual volume from 20,000 to 35,000 barrels.

The expansion project also updated the heart of the brewery operation. About $335,000 was spent on a power plant and boiler system and a new refrigeration system.

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