BarrelHouse Brewing to open taproom in downtown SLO

BarrelHouse Brewing Co. is planning for a lot of growth in 2015: The Paso Robles-based brewery is building a new taproom in San Luis Obispo and plans to double its annual beer production.

The brewery, which opened at 3055 Limestone Way in February 2013, produced 1,200 barrels (roughly 37,200 gallons of beer) in its first year, and more than doubled that to 2,500 barrels in 2014, owner and president Jason Carvalho said. Now the brewery is looking to double production once again to 5,000 barrels (roughly 155,000 gallons of beer) in 2015, he said.

“What we’ve been doing is making sure that we have the consistency to make these beers,” Carvalho said, noting that his trio of brewers come from a range of backgrounds, including winemaking, and have taken the past few years to experiment with brewing.

Since it opened in 2013, Carvalho said the BarrelHouse has created a close relationship with several wineries in Paso Robles.

“The local community and wineries really took to us, so now we do a lot of collaborations,” he said. “We even take our beers out to some vineyards and use their wild yeast to ferment the beers — you could never duplicate those beers because of that.”

Carvalho said he thinks it is now time to expand below the Cuesta Grade and reach a wider audience.

“It seems as though a lot of San Luis Obispo residents look at the Grade like this giant journey, and they don’t want to come over into North County,” he said. “So I thought it would be the perfect opportunity now to introduce the area to our brand on a more intimate level.”

BarrelHouse will open a new taproom downtown at 1033 Chorro St. sometime in late March or early April, he said. The 2,000-square-foot taproom will have a “speakeasy feel,” Carvalho said, though he did not wish to disclose details of its design.

“It’s going to be really different from other beer experiences downtown,” Carvalho said.

The new taproom will feature 15 unique beers on tap, some of which the brewery has been working on for the past two years and have not yet been offered to the public.

Carvalho declined to disclose the business’ annual revenue or how much money he has invested into opening the taproom, although he did say he has increased the number of employees from three to 12 in the past two years and plans to add more once the taproom opens.

And Carvalho doesn’t plan to stop at San Luis Obispo — he also has plans to open another BarrelHouse taproom sometime in 2016, though he declined to disclose the exact location, saying that it had not yet “been firmed up.”

This story was originally published December 30, 2014 at 4:33 PM with the headline "BarrelHouse Brewing to open taproom in downtown SLO."