Dirt Road Brewing’s expansion project along 13th and Main is entering its final stretch. Owner Chuck Cox said Wednesday that the building under construction behind the popular pub, meant to house his brewery operation, should be up and running within a month.
“We’re on the downhill side of it now, but we’re looking forward to moving the brewery over and expanding the size of our brewery, having more outdoor seating,” he said. “I think it’s a great thing for Philomath.”
The project involves relocating Dirt Road’s brewing operation from its current rented space elsewhere in town into a new 4,000-square-foot facility behind the Main Street brewpub. Cox said the timeline stretched out longer than he expected, largely because of an earlier decision that added scope to the project.
“The biggest holdup was the fact that I bought the music store next door. Time, money and effort went into getting that ready, but you know, once we started out here, things have been moving along pretty quickly,” Cox said. “I’m pretty happy with the progress. We’re almost done, probably within a month, the building will be occupied.”
Cox said he also ran into complications with the sewer system and neighboring utilities along the way.
One piece of the puzzle is finally falling into place — the building that Cox had been storing on his residential property — visible in his yard for roughly three years — has now been moved to the brewery site.
“It’s nice to get that out of my yard,” Cox said. “My wife was kind of questioning me on it — ‘is it ever going to happen?’ It finally did.”
Cox said the current brewing operation will keep running out of its existing space even after the new structure is finished while equipment is transferred piece by piece.
“We’ll slowly start moving stuff over there, that’ll be a little bit of a process,” Cox said. “We have beer that’s in fermenters — we have to take that out and bring the fermenters over, but we can’t brew again until we get the brew house over there, so it’ll be a little bit of a juggling act for six weeks, but we’ll get it.”
Complicating the move further — roughly 200 kegs currently in storage will need a new home. Cox said he’s leaning toward buying a new cold storage system rather than moving everything as-is.
“We’re probably going to buy a newer one and put it in, and then we can just move everything over,” he said. “Because we need one now that you can run a forklift in … we’ll double or triple our capacity out here.”
Plans for a covered, heated patio and roughly 150 feet of new frontage along 13th Street are still part of the vision. Once the new building is fully operational, Cox expects it to reshape nearly every part of the business — production volume, the beer lineup and how far Dirt Road’s beer travels.
“All of the above,” Cox said when asked whether capacity, lineup and distribution would change. “We’ve made over 100 different beers and we only have 16 taps. We have the capabilities to make anything, but then again, you need to be able to store it, you need to be able to sell it.”
Cox added, “We definitely want to increase our distribution, especially as far as canning — get a bigger canning line, so we can move more cans. Our problem is we can’t make enough beer.”
The new space will also open up the brewing process to customers with an ADA-accessible layout and doors that open into the brewery itself. Cox said tours and special gatherings will be part of the plan.
Dirt Road recently added a full bar and specialty cocktail menu on the expansion side of its Main Street building, which was added when Cox purchased the neighboring property.
“I couldn’t be happier with the way things are going,” Cox said. “Our cocktails, our lunch crowd has really picked up. We’ve talked about opening up on Monday, but we’ll see.”
Dirt Road’s popular early summer block party did not happen this year — it would’ve been last weekend. Cox confirmed the construction project is the reason.
In its place, Cox said he’s planning a scaled-back, fall version of the event for this year — though it’s not yet clear whether that will become a lasting change to the tradition or simply a one-time makeup for the missed summer date.
“We’re probably going to do something later in the year, more of a fall fest type of thing, SeptemberFest,” Cox said. “I’m thinking we can have the live music, the stage can be my patio, so I don’t have to have the tent and all of that will be set up for music up there. We can still block the street off, but I probably won’t have the vendors and everything like I have in the past — it’ll just be a nice Saturday evening party out here.”
Dirt Road Brewing first opened in Philomath at Main and North 13th in August 2019.
