The Schlafly Bottleworks brewery opened in 2003 to produce more great Schlafly Beer for the loyal and thirsty Schlafly fans, growing in population.
In 2001, we made the commitment as a company to bring the production of all Schlafly Beer back to St. Louis, MO. The brewery occupies about 23,000 square feet of the building space.
Our brewhouse is a unique piece of kit. It was being built for Gordon Biersch when they sold their retail side to Big River Brewing. It was modeled off their original Voxman brew house and was designed to be a two vessel system. We took over the design and construction, adding two more vessels, and eventually, a fifth in 2008.
We currently brew over 20 styles on this brewhouse for package in both 12 ounce bottles and draft kegs (50 liter and 1/6th bbl.) for distribution in our current markets. The brewing vessels handle various batch sizes from 20 to 30 barrel yield.
In 2008, additional modifications were made to keep up with the growing demand and we are currently able to start a new batch every two hours on this brewhouse. A typical two shift day results in seven brews going through the system.
Our "cellars" have grown over the years as well. We ferment beer in 30, 60, 100, 120 and 210 BBL fermenters. This variety in size allows us to manage the varying amounts of different Schlafly Beer, getting it to everyone as fresh as we possibly can. We have the capacity to condition 3,100 Barrels of beer at one time, as well as 1,220 Barrels of bright beer capacity for packaging.
Our packaging area consists of two lines. One is a 12 ounce glass bottle packaging line which runs at 100 bottles per minute which equates to a rate of 250 cases per hour. Our kegging line runs at 40 kegs per hour.
On a typical packaging day, we will fill 1600 to 2000 cases and 240 to 300 kegs.
We employ 25 people on the production side at the Bottleworks facility, doing everything that needs to be done to ensure that Schlafly can continue to make the world a safer place for great beer. We continue to strive in all areas of brewing to improve on what we love to do every day.
