SweetWater Brewing Co. of Atlanta may be the first eastern brewery to expand westward. The brewery has announced that it purchased the brewing system that was once a Pyramid Breweries production brewery in Berkeley, California. The building itself has been sold.
The purchase includes a 130 barrel brewhouse which could produce up to 420,000 barrels. SeweetWater is looking for a location to house the brewery and has said that they are looking along the west coast.
SweetWater is the 18th largest brewery in the country with sales in 18 states. After a flurry of west coast breweries expanded into a second production plant in the mid-west and east over recent years, it was bound to happen that an eastern brewery would look westward.