Union Craft Brewing’s planned local merchant hub is filling up fast.
The newest addition: Baltimore Whiskey Company, currently based in Remington. The company announced its move in comic YouTube fashion this morning, following in The Charmery’s footsteps last week.
The video depicts head distiller Eli Breitburg-Smith as a tortured soul who’s barreled so much liquor that he’s boxed himself in at their warehouse on Sisson Street. Fortunately, CEO Max Lents gets word from their beer-making counterparts at Union Craft that there’s a space awaiting them in Medfield.
Drama aside, the two-year-old company’s need for more space is urgent. Lents, Breitburg-Smith and Ian Newton opened up their distillery in November 2015. They’ve since stockpiled 43 barrels of whiskey and are now running short on “genuine barrel storage space,” Lents said in an interview.
“We would probably run out of room by about the end of the year,” he said.
In their future 10,000-square-foot space at Union Collective, located at 1700 W. 41st Street, they’ll have plenty of added barrel storage, as well more fermentation space with room for a second, larger still. Lents said in the long term, the distillery will be able to put out 10 times as much whiskey as it does now.
The company, which also makes gin, apple brandy and ginger-apple liqueur, plans to move in at the beginning of 2018. Ideally, Lents said, the opening will coincide with the release of their two-year-aged rye whiskey, which he added will be the first rye distilled within the city limits to hit the market in the last 50 years.
At Union Collective, Baltimore Whiskey Company will join The Charmery and Earth Treks, a chain of rock climbing gyms with two other locations in the Baltimore area. And of course, they’ll all be right next to Union Craft, which is moving from its home base down the road in Woodberry into a new 50,000-square-foot headquarters.
Construction on Union Collective is set to begin this weekend. The brewery plans to move into its adjacent space next spring.
Lents said his company takes pride in joining a new venture for the made-in-Baltimore business community.
“A big impetus for the company in general was kind of our love for the Baltimore scene,” Lents said. “This is very much part of who we are.”
Beer tasting, whiskey tasting and rock climbing…what could go wrong???Just kidding…congrats to all of these young entrepreneurs who make Baltimore a better (and more fun) place to live!