Por Ashley Mackin | Editor SDUN

Stone Brewing Co., the Escondido-based craft beer company, is expanding. The company opened a filling station in South Park and is working on a Liberty Station location opening this year, with other projects in the works.

Saying that Stone Brewing opened as craft brewing was just starting out, co-founder Greg Koch said times have changed dramatically.

When Stone Brewing first opened as a production-only brewery in 1996, Koch said people didn’t know what to make of them. “When I would tell people I worked for a small local brewery, they would say, ‘oh what kind of food do you serve,’” he said. “Because that’s what people’s perceptions were… and other than AleSmith, which had opened up the year before us, I can’t recall if there were any other strictly production breweries.”

Now, San Diego is considered a leading authority in beer production. “San Diego won more medals in the last World Beer Cup, which is judged primarily by European judges,” Koch said, adding that the competition featured more European beers than those from any other region. “Yet San Diego won more medals than the [United Kingdom], Belgium and Germany combined,” he said.

With San Diego craft brewing becoming more common in recent years, Koch knew it was time to expand.

For one of their expansion projects, Stone Brewing opened a fill station in South Park at 2215 30th St. in June 2011 for those with a Stone Brewing growler, a 64-ounce sealable jug, who want to fill it with the company’s beers.

Koch said the inspiration was simply to make beer more accessible to the Uptown communities. “I like the idea of our local growler customers not having to drive all the way to the brewery every time they want to get their growler filled,” he said. “It’s just part of being part of the neighborhood.”

Another expansion project is the Liberty Station restaurant, a 22,000-square-foot restaurant and brewery, which will have 40 beers on draft. While similar in design to the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens, at 1999 Citracado Parkway in Escondido, the new location will be all its own.

“We weren’t just looking for a new location for another restaurant,” Koch said. “We built the one in Escondido to be unbeatable. I didn’t want to create a cookie cutter or stamp-able style.”

However, the company has faced some challenges in getting the Liberty Station restaurant built.

Koch said he wants the same open space one would find at the Escondido location because, “you have to have a space that feels good for people to want to come back and visit,” he said.

Achieving this at the new location would require removing drywall to open up the ceiling. However, the building that will house the new restaurant is historically designated, so the required state approval to make the proposed changes will not happen. “We don’t want to do one single thing that would cause any permanent change to the historical structure,” he said.

At the same time, several other projects are in the works, including a 19-acre plot with five farmable acres at Stone Farms, nine miles from the Escondido brewery, which will provide produce for the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens; the Stone Hotel, which will offer rooms, event space as well as a barrel aging room; and the Stone Packaging Hall to expand their kegging and bottling practices, both in Escondido.

Koch said the beer industry is valuable to the San Diego economy, and he is happy to be a part of it. “What we’ve developed is a tremendous local resource for tourism and our economy,” he said. “We have an opportunity as a community to foster this local pride.”

He added Stone Brewing has been able to work with local restaurants to carry their beers. “What they do is they look at [breweries] as sources for bringing in people from the outside, and [as] sources of local pride that actually help increase the number of tourism dollars we get,” he said. “It’s a significant contribution to our local economy, which is great. We are really proud to be doing that.”

For more information about the Stone Brewing expansion projects, visit stonebrew.com/projects.