Wicked Weed has shot up like, well, a weed. This almost three year old business has opened as many facilities in just as many years. Starting out with the flagship location on Biltmore Avenue, expanding to the Funkatorium located on Asheville’s South Slope, the team now is brewing at their new production facility in Candler. Wicked Weed first introduced their new 40,000 square facility earlier this year with a groundbreaking ceremony, where they outline their plans to brew, bottle, and sell their beloved beer to the Asheville masses. The new facility will not only bottle and brew, but in late 2016 the tasting room should be available for the general public to come and imbibe in one of the many Wicked brews.
This new production facility doesn’t have the brewery considering themselves a larger entity. Instead, Wicked Weed considers themselves still a small scale brewery, now just with a larger distribution for Asheville. Walt Dickinson explains “This new 50 barrel brewhouse just supports our ADD approach to beer.” Most breweries have a small line of beer that they focus on, with one shot releases semi annually, whereas Wicked Weed proudly offers 25 or more beers at all times.
With this new location, Wicked Weed is now operating at the same size size as Oskar Blues in Brevard. Formerly only able to brew 15 barrels at the pub, the new brewhouse is a 50 barrel capacity, which equates to 1500 gallons of beer. With this rapid expansion, Wicked Weed can now begin bottling and distributing their popular beers, like the Freak of Nature IPA on their new bottling line.
Sit back and enjoy the ride folks – we have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg for what Wicked Weed has to offer Asheville and beyond. Check out some behind the scenes photos of Wicked Weed’s new production facility below: