There was a time when Alltech Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co. was Lexington’s only brewery. Led by its flagship brand, Kentucky Ale, the brewery helped introduce Alltech to a broader audience while also introducing many consumers to craft beer.
Alltech’s brewery has also served as an incubator of sorts for brewers wanting to learn the intricacies of a bigger system. Many owners and brewers at local breweries got their professional start at Alltech, including Mirror Twin co-owner and head brewer Derek DeFranco, West Sixth head brewer Robin Sither and Country Boy co-owner Nathan Coppage, as well as Rock House’s head brewer Jon Brown.
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Alltech Staff
Alltech Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co., one of the state’s largest brewers, distributes its beers in 31 states and seven countries.
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Alltech Staff
Scott Hand worked there as a brew-house operator for five years before becoming head brewer at Monnik in Louisville.
“People would come in, I would train them and then they would go start a brewery,” said Hand. “That happened a lot. In many ways, that’s how the Lexington scene developed.”
“Almost every brewery in town has somebody who learned the production brewing here,” said Peter Weiss, marketing manager with Alltech Lexington Brewing & Distilling. “I’m sure they were all home brewers before that, but they came in here and learned the production side of things and how a large-scale operation works, and I hope that helps them in their current roles. It is kind of a bit of pride for our guys out there.”
Alltech, which distributes its beers in 31 states and seven countries, is a much bigger operation than most other Kentucky breweries with many resources other breweries don’t have, including a fully equipped quality assurance lab as well as a barrel-aging cooler the size of two football fields.
Despite its size, Ken Lee, head brewer at Alltech for 10 years, told Hand in his job interview that brewing at Alltech was similar to home brewing, just using bigger pots and pans.
“If I hadn’t had that experience [at Alltech], I wouldn’t have known what I was doing.” —Monnik head brewer Scott Hand
“And he was right, in a way,” said Hand, who was tasked with setting up Monnik’s brewing system when he started. “If I hadn’t had that experience [at Alltech], I wouldn’t have known what I was doing.”
This trend of smaller breweries spawning off of larger ones isn’t new. Stone Brewing in San Diego, Deschutes Brewing and Rogue Brewing in Oregon, Elysian Brewing in Seattle, and Avery and New Belgium in Colorado are a few examples of breweries that have had employees move on to open or work in other smaller regional spots.
West Sixth Brewing, Country Boy Brewing, Blue Stallion Brewing, Ethereal Brewing, Rock House Brewing, Life Brewpub, Mirror Twin Brewing, and Pivot Brewing have all opened up in Lexington, and Fusion Brewing plans to open in the Distillery District in November of 2018.
West Sixth brewery founders Brady Barlow, Robin Sither, Ben Self and Joe Kuosman. / Photo courtesy West Sixth
Regional breweries outside of Lexington include Dreaming Creek Brewery in Richmond, Rooster Brewing in Paris, Lemon’s Mill Brewery in Harrodsburg, the soon-to-be My Old Kentucky Foam in Georgetown, in addition to the numerous breweries in nearby Louisville.
With all those tallied, Central Kentucky is putting together quite the brewing resume, and still, Kentucky is 42nd in breweries per capita based on a 2017 statistic by Brewers Association.
“I still think it’s a good time to open up a craft brewery,” said Mirror Twin’s DeFranco. “The numbers are deceiving because it’s not that craft beer sales are slowing down; it’s that where craft beer is sold is changing. It’s not on the shelves as much.”
While regional craft brewery sales growth increased by just 1 percent in 2017, local breweries are still seeing a higher rate of growth. According to the Brewers Association, craft beer sales increased by 5 percent in 2017, with microbreweries accounting for 60 percent of that growth and brewpubs accounting for 15 percent.
DeFranco spoke of the importance of supporting new breweries. When he was starting out, he received a lot of guidance from his friends at Country Boy, West Sixth and Blue Stallion, among others, he said.
Recently, the folks at Dreaming Creek brewery in Richmond bought Mirror Twin’s three-barrel fermenters, and DeFranco was excited to see things come full circle.
“I love to see other people getting to live their dream the way I got the opportunity." —Mirror Twin co-owner and head brewer Derek DeFranco
“I love to see other people getting to live their dream the way I got the opportunity,” he said. “We’ve grown the [local craft-beer] community even more, and so there’s so much more room left that I don’t think we’re competition.”
“That’s the whole point of craft beer,” said Weiss. “Everybody wants to try something new, something different, something unique, and the more people that are producing those unique beers, the better it is for the entire industry.”