Long-awaited expansion of Auburn’s Prison City Brewing now underway

AUBURN, NY -- The much anticipated expansion of one of Central New York’s most highly regarded breweries has begun.

The owners of Prison City Pub & Brewery broke ground this week on a second location that will combine a bigger production facility with a taproom and eventually an event space.

The new spot is at 251 North St., just over a mile from the acclaimed brewpub that opened at 28 State St. in downtown Auburn in December 2014. The brewpub -- a combination restaurant/bar/brewhouse -- will remain open.

Owner Dawn and Marc Schulz hope to open the first phase of the $4.7 million project in the summer of 2020. That will include a 20-barrel brewhouse (four times the size of the one in the brewpub) and a taproom/beer garden. The second phase will include renovating a barn on the property into an event space, and potentially adding a facility for barrel-aged beers.

The project is in line for a $900,000 grant from the state Empire State Development office to “reimburse Prison City Brewery for a portion of machinery and equipment in exchange for (creating) 20 jobs,” according to ESD spokeswoman Kristin Devoe.

The new brewhouse will eventually boost Prison City’s production from the current 1,000 barrels per year to about 10,000. (A barrel is 31 gallons). It may take a few years to ramp up to that level, Dawn Schulz said.

“We’ve been working to this for a while,” she said. “Now it’s almost here.”

CNY Beer Week: When, where and what to drink

Prison City, which has won several national awards and recognition for its beers, has been looking for a place to expand for several years. The Schulzs initially hoped to be part of a downtown public-private partnership called Riverside Regional Public Market, but those plans never materialized. Last year, they considered a different location on North Street.

The new location is 5.2 acres, more than double the area of the other North Street location, Schulz said. It is an old farm, and the plan is to preserve the old barn on the property for the event space.

The brewery itself will be a 14,000-square-foot pre-engineered building that will be assembled on site.

The expansion will allow Prison City to greatly expand the production of some most popular beers, for sale onsite and to limited off-site accounts.

But Dawn Schulz said they are taking care “not to get ahead of ourselves” and fall into the financial difficulties faced by other breweries that have expanded, such as Empire Farm Brewery in Cazenovia.

“At 10,000 barrels (per year) we’ll be big, but not too big,” she said. For now, the brewery plans to continue self-distribution to other accounts, rather than signing up with a third-party distributor. Marc Schulz has sales and distribution experience.

After its opening, Prison City almost immediately began winning notice for the beers produced by head brewer Ben Maeso.

It won a medal at the prestigious Great American Beer Fest in 2015 and in 2017 made the finals of the first Taste NY Craft Beer Challenge.

Its Mass Riot, a version of a hazy, juicy New England-style IPA, ranked first in a national taste test of IPAs by Paste magazine in 2016 and in the Top 10 in 2018. Now, fans routinely line up outside the State Street location for limited can releases of Mass Riot and other beers.

Those limited releases could come more often and in higher volume in the future.

“We have people asking us all the time to make more,” Dawn Schulz said. “Now we’ll be able to do it.”

Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks for visiting Syracuse.com. Quality local journalism has never been more important, and your subscription matters. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.