Brew house expected to arrive next week for Backpocket Brewing

CORALVILLE -- A brew pub under construction in Coralville's Iowa River Landing retail development plans to take delivery of a key component next week.

A 33-barrel brew house, considered the "heart" of a microbrewery, will be delivered Wednesday, May 9 to Backpocket Brewing. The state-of-the-art brewing facility, with a capacity of more than 1,000 gallons, was manufactured by Braukon of Munich, Germany, and will be the largest brew house in Iowa.

Jacob Simmons, Backpocket's brewmaster, said the brew house pioneers the concept of sustainable brewing with an innovative design that reduces carbon consumption by 60 percent, recaptures water waste, and repurposes organic waste.

"Backpocket embodies a world class design that we believe sets our plant as well as our beers apart from others," Simmons said. The brew house will take about eight weeks to install and commission. We plan to be brewing by July 15."

The Coralville plant will be an expansion of Backpocket Brewing's existing brewing operations at Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery in McGregor. Old Man River was the dream of Dave and Marci Strutt, McGregor natives, who set out to create the finest brewpub in Iowa.

Backpocket Brewing was created to distribute draft and packaged beer, which it has done as a draft-only operation for the past two years. The new production plant will allow Backpocket to expand its packaging options to also include bottles.

The company expects the Coralville plant to produce 7,000 to 8,000 barrels of beer in its first year; the total capacity of the facility is approximately 25,000 barrels.

Backpocket Brewing will begin serving beer later this month in its newly completed Tap Room, a 2,500-square-foot tasting facility. Initially, bottle beer will come from the McGregor brewery until the Coralville operation begins producing bottle beer in July.