Iron Horse Brewery, Ellensburg based brewer of the critically and publically acclaimed Irish Death dark ale sold in five states, is expanding its production facility and capacity for the first time since 2012 to meet new demand.

That might mean more jobs for Ellensburg locals, and it definitely means more beer.

Bubbly Beginnings

According to the company’s website and owner Greg Parker’s blog posts, Iron Horse was originally founded in 2004 by Jim Quilter and was bought out two years later by father-son duo, Gary and Greg Parker when Greg was just 26 years old.

Initially, the brewery was broke and struggling but Gary, Greg and others turned that around with the success of multiple different brews (the brewery now offers more than 10 different brews depending on the season.) Irish Death, a dark ale, in particular, has helped propel the brewery to national recognition and helped solidify Iron Horse as the fifth largest brewery in the state.

The company moved locations in 2012 to a new location on Vantage Highway, the outskirts of Ellensburg, to meet demand after opening a customer-welcome pub and tasting room on Main Street.

Now they are expanding the footprint of that facility for the first time to meet customer and retailer demand according to Jared Vallejo, marketing director for Iron Horse.

Bigger Brewing

“We’ve been three years in this existing building where we did our first big expansion and now we’re running out of room and production space so we’re increasing the footprint,” Vallejo said.

That increase means a new refrigeration system, packaging area, hop cooling facility, grain room and other tools for the busy brewery.

Greg Parker told the Daily Record that right now the employees at Iron Horse are brewing 18 to 20 hours a day, most days.

“That expansion allows us to virtually double our efficiency while retaining our existing staff,” Vallejo said. “Ultimately it means making career level jobs and having more job stability and doing our part to make Ellensburg more of a destination, not that there isn’t a lot of great stuff here already.”

Bigger Beer

Vallejo said that the brewery has had great success being based in Ellensburg and hiring locals, some being students from Central, and hopes to keep that same local energy connected to the expanding brewery.

Ryan Bernstein, a former Central student and Iron Horse regular, says that he doesn’t think the expansion will hurt Iron Horse’s quality, and that he is excited to see what it brings to the table.

“I think it’s cool, the fact that I live in a town that has a nationally known brewery is really cool. They will keep the integrity of the product, they wouldn’t sacrifice that,” Bernstein said. “I’m hoping the expansion means more of a variety of things.”

Vallejo said that the expansion means just that: more bottle, can and packaging production that the brewery hopes to expand upon and experiment with as well as being used to meet the demand of the 5 states it currently ships to while maybe looking at the future, too.

 
“Maybe we’ll start looking at northern California and maybe British Columbia but there’s a lot of room to grow in those five states,” Vallejo said.