Lexington Beerworks owners Jason Wolf, Greg Leimer and Michael Vincent.
Lexington, KY - After opening in early 2012, the owners of Lexington Beerworks are planning on expanding the services the craft and specialty beer bar offers, including adding food service.
Along with being a bar, Lexington Beerworks, located on North Limestone, is a retail location for a variety of home brewing equipment.
The owners, Michael Vincent, Greg Leimer and Jason Wolf, signed the lease on the space above their bar earlier in July when it became available. The unit is broken into a number of rooms, which they plan on utilizing for a number of different purposes, such as creating a space for private parties and installing a commercial kitchen.
“I think the No. 1 thing we’ve found since we’ve opened is the need for food,” Vincent said.
The owners said the menu will be small but will consist of a number of high-quality food items, such as artisan pizzas. Vincent said a small menu will enable the chef to change up the offerings often, and will allow them to provide special food and beer pairings.
“We’ve always had this plan in the past, and we’re at the point right now where we think we’ve got the craft beer at the bar and the home brew side down pat,” he said. “We think we can take it to the next level and be a spot for dinner.”
Though the kitchen will be located upstairs, patrons will still order the food downstairs in the main bar area. Vincent said they hope to have the kitchen and private room installed by September.
Another room upstairs will be utilized to increase the amount of home-brewing equipment and ingredients available.
“Since the very beginning, we’ve wanted to carry more home brew supplies, but we’ve been very constrained with the space, and now that this space has opened up, we’re fortunate to have some extra space where we can expand our offerings,” Leimer said.
Along with added home brew equipment, Leimer says Lexington Beerworks also plans on carrying wine-making equipment and kits.
“It’s very popular around the country right now,” he said. “People are making their own wine now because the kits are very good.”
And, depending on the permitting process, the owners would like to use another room upstairs to turn Lexington Beerworks into the city’s newest brewery. Leimer says they would like to use the home-brewing equipment and ingredients they sell at the bar to make small batches of beer which would be available on tap.
“We get a lot of questions from people about home brewing – what’s it taste like, is it any good – and I think a lot of people are really surprised at how good home brew can be,” Leimer said.
Though Beerworks would have to go through the same steps to get a permit to sell the beer made on the premises, Vincent said the process should be somewhat easy since they will only be brewing extremely small batches and won’t be bringing in lots of industrial equipment, just carboys.
“There will be no brewery tours,” he said.