A first-hand look at Phantom Canyon's expanded brewery

In between pints of the hoppy and wonderful Continuum Belgian Ale at Phantom Canyon, I checked in with Alan Stiles and got to see the brewery's expansion project first-hand. I'm really excited for Phantom Canyon, as they'll be doing a fair amount more in terms of bottling and capacity, and they'll have a few outside accounts as well. So we'll hopefully see their beer a few places around town.

When I stopped in last week, they were getting ready for the first brew on the new system. In the photo above you can see the two new 30 barrel fermenters next to the old 10 barrel ferments. Not pictured are the two new 15 barrel fermenters as well. The equipment fits into a newly built structure on the side of the building's northern wall. All the construction had to pass a Historical Review and maintain the spirit of the original building.

We went into the space where the old brewery was and, while I've been in there before, I don't remember it being as small as it was. That area will soon be morphed into an additional 25 or so seats for the restaurant.

There are more exciting changes at Phantom Canyon as well. Ben Wilder, who was part of the Brew Bros of Pikes Peak homebrew club, has signed on as an assistant brewer. Mike Dee has left to fill Jason's roll at Rock Bottom, so while he's no longer downtown, thankfully he'll still be in the city.

Phantom is planning to do much more bottling as well. At this point they're planning to bottle their Dubbel, Tripel, Batch 2000 Wheat Wine, and perhaps a big Russian Imperial Stout.

In the bar, there will now be room for three additional beers on tap. Alan plans to always have a sour beer on tap and is making preparations for that. There will be more space for barrels as well. 20 or so barrels will be for non-funky sour beers and they'll also be able to greatly increase their non-sour barrel aged program (think Winston Smith's Barleywine!).

The final portion of the expansion is an upstairs patio that adds an additional 50 seats to the restaurant. The space, which is directly over the top of the new brewing space, will have heating and offer a beautiful view of the front range.

As of last week, the plan was to open the patio as early as July 1st, so we'd recommend checking out the PCBC FB page, or the PCBC brewery page to stay tuned on that. I think the changes at Phantom will make this space ever more appealing, and we will get to see an even greater selection of beer with some of our favorites receiving a bit more spotlight. Congrats Phantom!

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