White Labs, the California-based yeast-maker building a new East Coast operation in Asheville has announced that it plans to begin production in January. All construction is planned to be finished by spring 2017, about the same time that a tasting room will open to the public, the company said in a recent online post.
White Labs has been working on its new 32,000-square-foot facility at 172 South Charlotte St. The building, formerly owned by the city of Asheville, has been completely renovated and will include both a laboratory and a tasting room. The company announced last year that it would open an East Coast facility in Asheville and employ about 65 people, including everyone from tasting room personnel to microbiologists.
Here’s more from White Labs:
So far, we finished building out space for our production facility and administrative offices, and have also begun to move in our yeast propagation equipment (also known as the FlexCell™ process). Once production begins in January, we will be producing a limited amount of yeast from this location and likely still shipping most of our supply from San Diego. In phase two we’ll be adding more FlexCells™ and increasing production.
Hiring for Asheville officially began in early fall 2016. A few our of San Diego-based team members have relocated to assist with setting up the facility, on-boarding new employees and allowing for operations to smoothly commence. Among them, our very own vice president Lisa White is now residing in North Carolina and driving this project to fruition. We set a date for Asheville’s new hire orientation to begin immediately after the New Year. Are you interested in joining the team? Take a peek at the White Labs jobs board here.
While we’d love to have you stop by for a tour and educational beer tasting at White Labs Asheville, we hope to officially open to the public in late spring 2017. We’re working on a tasting room and boutique restaurant, along with adding an educational classroom and large-scale brewing system. Much like our current San Diego and Boulder Tasting Room, the AVL Tasting Room will serve the same batches of beer fermented with different White Labs pure liquid yeast strains. This will all mark the completion of phase three, and for the next two years, we’ll shift our focus to increasing yeast production from Asheville.