In addition to numerous projects in the works, San Diego's Modern Times Beer announced today that in 2018 it will open a brewery and tasting room in Portland, Oregon. The Modern Times Belmont Fermentorium is coming to provide delicious craft beer to the Pacific Northwest.
The team at San Diego's Modern Times Beer is a busy bunch. The company - which recently announced their goal of becoming California's first employee-owned brewery - currently has numerous project in the works, including a long-awaited brewpub & coffeehouse in Los Angeles dubbed 'The Dankness Dojo' (which is anticipated to open by year's end), a gigantic beer playground in downtown Anaheim called 'Leisuretown', and a tasting room in Encinitas named 'The Far West Lounge'. All this is in addition to the company's original brewery and coffee shop in Point Loma, The Lomaland Fermentorium, and North Park's Flavordome tasting room.
"I’ve loved the city of Portland for a long, long time," explained Modern Times Founder Jacob McKean. "I’ve been visiting regularly for well over a decade, and I gave serious consideration to starting Modern Times in PDX. I ultimately decided to stay in San Diego, where my roots in the brewing scene were deepest, but I never gave up on the dream of building something in Portland."
Modern Times founder Jacob McKean, who started the company in Point Loma in 2013, had been in search for a suitable spot to implant a brewery in Portland to take care of the company's Pacific Northwest distribution. When he was approached by Mike Wright of The Common Brewery, who Modern Times collaborated with on two occasions, to see if McKean would be interested in renting The Common's 10,000 square-foot brewery at 630 SE Belmont Street, it was like kismet.
"When Mike contacted me earlier this year, he let me know that the current space wasn’t working well for their operation and asked if I was interested in leasing the space," explained McKean. "It pretty quickly became clear to me that this was something we should do. It filled a real need for Modern Times - we’re capacity constrained, in part due to our success in the Pacific Northwest - while helping out a friend of the brewery who had shown us support and solidarity along the way. Just recently, we officially signed a lease on the space."
As of January 1, 2018, The Belmont Fermentorium will begin. Modern Times will close the brewery for about a month while new equipment and distinctive art installations are installed and the tasting room is constructed. Modern Times hopes that The Belmont Fermentorium will produce all of the draft beer for distribution in the Pacific Northwest, with first year capacity estimated to be around 7,000bbls.
Modern Times has also leased the 10,000 square-foot neighboring building at 600 SE Belmont, which will be renovated over 2018 and eventually house a packaging hall and tank farm, allowing the brewery to package canned beer for Pacific Northwest distribution. The final capacity for the combined spaces should be around 20,000bbls. In the future, Modern Times also plan to add a coffee roaster and café, along with a full food component.
For more information on Modern Times Beer, visit moderntimesbeer.com.
