JDub's Brewing Company joins the Brew Hub Collective

After only two years of creating and adding its unique style and taste to Sarasota's craft beer community, JDub's Brewing Company is hitting a growth spurt. Now, thanks to a partnership with one of the country's leading craft beer manufactures and distributers, JDub's beer is about to double in size as well as add two new beers to its year-round brewing family. They grow up so fast. 

Brew Hub, a St. Louis-based craft beer manufacturer, announced today that it is expanding its first brewery in Lakeland, Fla. The facility, which opened in 2014 and is one of the largest in the state, will install eight new fermentation tanks and new bright beer tanks by February. The new hardware will allow Brew Hub to expand its craft beer capacity from 60,000 barrels annually (one million cases) to approximately 100,000 barrels annually, or 1.4 million cases of beer, that will be distributed and sold throughout the state.

Along with this expansion, Brew Hub is adding JDub's and M.I.A. Brewing Company out of Miami to its craft beer collective, which also includes the likes of Cigar City, BJ's Restaurants, Toppling Goliath, Green Man, Orange Blossom, GolfBeer and Brew Bus. 

“We designed the brewery with expansion in mind," says Tim Schoen, CEO of Brew Hub. "We hoped this day would come – it just arrived sooner than we could have ever imagined. The expansion proves the model we built to help craft brewers grow is working. We’re excited to continue helping our partners grow as we expand, and we welcome the opportunity to add quality brewers like JDub’s and M.I.A. to our team."

Joining team Brew Hub will allow JDub's founder and owner Jeremy Joerger and his team to potentially more than double their current annual brewing capacity and hopefully expand their reach outside of Florida. 

"I've been following Brew hub since even before they existed," says Joerger. "I am thrilled and honored to be a part of the same group as Cigar City and the other breweries. With Brew Hub, we can expand our annual capacity as well as add more beers to our year round production. That would have been impossible to pull off at just our home location."

JDub's along with Brew Hub will increase the Sarasota craft brewery's annual capacity from approximately 4,000 barrels of beer a year to nearly 10,000 barrels annually. In addition, Joerger says that thanks to the Brew Hub partnership JDub's will be able to add two more year round blends to be bottled, canned and sold.

Craft beer fans will be able to find JDub's Milk Chocolate Porter and Passion Fruit Mango Wheat Beer alongside the brewery's popular Up Top! IPA and Poolside Kölsch Ale on store shelves within the next month. 

"To be able to produce 4,000 barrels with just two brands of beer in only our second year gives us a pretty good indication at what type of growth we can expect when we add these two new beers to our portfolio," says Joerger. "Being a part of Brew Hub let's us expand without investing the capital in building a new, giant brewery. Eventually we want to be distributed throughout the southeast starting with Georgia, but we'll see where things go in 2016."