Update: Catawba to expand and renovate Morganton brewery

On the heels of announcing a new satellite brewery on the South Slope of Asheville’s downtown, Catawba Brewing has announced a major renovation and facelift for their Morganton location. “We have been in this building for over five years, and it is time we optimized it for the dual purpose of manufacturing and tasting room. …We need to spruce up the place, modernize it and improve the experience for both our local supporters and tourists alike,” says Billy Pyatt, co-owner of Catawba Brewing.

Pyatt says that the Morganton facility is now running at roughly five times the capacity of two years ago, and they have been adding equipment rapidly over the past year to keep up. He estimates the brewery has already spent around a half-million dollars on expansion in place, but to increase production further they’ll need to rejigger the building itself with “a functional and cosmetic face-lift” that will begin in a few weeks.

In short, the tasting room will move from its current location where it’s breaking the flow of the shipping/receiving area of the brewery. By moving it to the front of house and installing new windows on the Green Street side of the building, it will also create a natural flow from the tasting room to a new patio. The old tasting room space will merge with the rest of the manufacturing, shipping and storage space. On the exterior of the building, the company will also install a silo for grain storage.

“We will be able to open our customer-facing facilities without having to constantly juggle kegs, cans, shipments and stored materials between the current bar area and brewing areas,” says Ivy Johnson, commercial manager at Catawba Brewing. “We expect to be open to the public more days per week after the expansion, and we’ll have a much more spacious area for our customers to sit [and] enjoy a beer.”