VERO BEACH — Two craft beer companies owned by Vero Beach residents are racing neck and neck to become the largest commercial brewery on the Treasure Coast sometime next year.
Alan Dritenbas and Mike Malone, along with three investors, are turning a former Navy warehouse near the Vero airport into Walking Tree Brewery.
A second brewer, Nick Bischoff, who three years ago opened Sailfish Brewing Company in downtown Fort Pierce, just wrote “a huge check” to a Canadian company to manufacture fermenting tanks that would give Sailfish an even larger capacity than Walking Tree’s, at least for the time being.
Whether Sailfish’s new production facility will be in Vero is in doubt, since three weeks ago Bischoff pulled out of plans to open in downtown Vero’s former Compass Rehab building.
Though he is looking primarily in Fort Pierce for a larger facility, he hasn’t ruled out a Vero space.
Both Walking Tree and Sailfish are anticipating delivery on commercial-scale equipment within weeks of each other: Walking Tree’s in December and Sailfish’s in January.
Walking Tree has ordered a 20-barrel brewhouse, as has Sailfish, which currently mixes its beer in a three-barrel tank.
From there, the beer goes into fermenting tanks for two weeks.
Walking Tree has ordered two fermenting tanks, one 20-barrel and one 40-barrel.
Sailfish has ordered four 40-barrel fermenters and three 20-barrel.
Bischoff says he’ll continue to use his current tanks in Fort Pierce for new and one-off recipes.
Those tanks are squeezed into his brewpub in Fort Pierce’s Edgartown neighborhood, just off the redeveloped downtown.
The pub has a strong Vero following for its beer and its live music.
In Vero, Sailfish’s flagship beer, Sunrise City IPA, is available at Ocean Grill, but production is very limited.
The Compass Rehab building on 14th Avenue was more of a retail location, he says, and just didn’t fit his needs.
He remains good friends with developer Michael Rechter, who bought and gutted the property.
“It’s a shame, after nine months of working on it,” said Rechter.
Progress on Walking Tree’s brewery has also been tortuous. It took three sets of lawyers just to get the lease: The city of Vero Beach owns the building; the airport district owns the land.
The five Walking Tree partners include Dritenbas and Malone, plus architect Paul Dritenbas, Alan’s dad; Joe Labadie, owner of Central Window; and Jeff Morein, who works with George E. Warren Corp.
Even the Federal Aviation Authority came into play because of its proximity to the airport.
“There was a whole new set of plans that they had to approve,” says Malone. “We worked with (U.S. Representative) Bill Posey in DC to get our SBA loan through. It was a nightmare.”
The lease went into effect in July, 2014. The 23,700-square-foot space, where airplane wings and tail sections once hung from its massive rafters, had to be gutted and cleared.
Three weeks ago, a portion of the old concrete floor was replaced with a sloping slab fitted with drains; it will serve as the brewhouse floor.
Last Tuesday, a small interior space was built out for the mill that grinds the barley.
An elaborate entry door is on order from Central Window, its glass panel etched with Walking Tree’s mangrove roots logo.
Towards the rear sits a stack of milled lumber and limbs from a rosewood tree in Paul Dritenbas’ back yard. They will end up as the bar top and picnic tables, placed end to end, as in a German style biergarten.
Malone, a wood turner, plans to use the rosewood for tap handles, he says.
Within six months of opening, Dritenbas says, he and Malone hope to set up a canning assembly line. Until then the product will be delivered in kegs to bars and restaurants and be available for sale to consumers in recloseable bottles known as growlers.
Meanwhile, the two are testing their product at home.
“We’re looking at going a different way with ABV,” says Dritenbas, using the acronym for alcohol by volume.
Vero’s only existing brewery, Orchid Island Brewery, is producing “monsters,” he says: beers with alcohol content of up to 8 or 9 percent.
Lately, Walking Tree is working on what are known as session beers, crisp, refreshing beers that are lower in alcohol so that patrons can have a couple and still walk that sloping floor.
Orchid Island Brewery, on Ocean Drive at Flamevine, is owned by Alden Bing, an old friend of Dritenbas; they once talked of opening a brewery together but went their separate ways.
They are supportive of each other’s ventures, Dritenbas says.
A Sebastian brewery – so tiny they call it a nano-brewery – is Pareidolia Brewing Company. Located in a strip mall on U.S.1 just south of Riverview Park, Pareidolia is owned by Pete and Lynn Anderson.
It opened last September with a one-barrel system that can brew 31 gallons.
Orchid Island has a three-barrel brewhouse producing 90 gallons.
Walking Tree and Sailfish’s 20-barrel brewhouses can brew close to 1,300 gallons per batch. That gets poured into a 20-barrel fermenter, or two batches share a 40-gallon fermenter.
“Then, as we grow, we’ll buy a 60-, 80-, 120- and up,” says Walking Tree’s Malone.
What they may need most, though, are fans. The warehouse isn’t fitted for air conditioning.
Dritenbas shrugs off concern for the tasting room’s customers.
“It’s a production facility,” he says. “Have a beer.”
