Core Brewing Expands

The new Core tap room features a lengthy bar.

The largest capacity brewery on the rapidly expanding northwest Arkansas brewing scene has just gotten a bit bigger. Core Brewing of Springdale, Arkansas hosted a party this past weekend in its new building, which houses a new tasting room and vessels to increase production.

The new 1,500 square foot tasting room features a roomy bar, dart room, lounge, and outdoor seating. It’s a big step up from the previous 400 square foot space. Among the beers on tap this weekend were an IPA, Oktoberfest, American wheat, Bohemian pilsner, raspberry lager, and a black IPA.

More importantly, the second building adds ten new 50-barrel fermentation vessels and five 50-barrel bright tanks to the existing four 25-barrel fermenters and two 25-barrel brights. The new additions should allow Core to maximize its 25-barrel brewing capacity. The company has been experiencing growing pains, trying to keep up with demand.

Core is hoping new vessels will eliminate bottlenecks.

“We’re not even able to penetrate the markets that we would like to,” says founder Jesse Core. “We’ve limited the amount of accounts in Little Rock because of limited capacity. We want to make sure we’ve got enough beer going to Little Rock, Hot Springs, and eastern Arkansas. We just can’t do it right now. We’re not going to leave cups on taps anymore.”

Core has just been approved to distribute beer into Missouri, further accentuating the need for increased production.

The company has come a long way since being founded in 2010 on a 27-gallon pilot system. Core’s flagship beer is an ESB, which is based on Jesse’s tried and true homebrew recipe. He’s hoping the new tanks will help the brewery expand into several styles, increase maturation time, and solve challenges with the canning line. According to Jesse, consumers should be seeing Core cans on the shelves in the next month or two.

“Arkansas is ripe for breweries.” Jesse says. “We’re just listening to what the people want and doing it.”