From The Auburn Citizen | By David Wilcox | November 1, 2020

Lunkenheimer Craft Brewing Co. opened in September 2014, the first licensed brewery in Cayuga County since Prohibition. But by September 2015, owners Derric and Kristen Slocum already knew they had to move.

Their brewery was 1,200 square feet, and tucked behind the former Old Erie Restaurant at 8920 N. Seneca St. in the village of Weedsport. A former laundromat, its plumbing required the Slocums to place their bar in the middle of the room, and around it their brewing equipment, seating and everything else. So the space wasn't just invisible, it was inflexible.

When the Slocums started looking for a new location for Lunkenheimer, though, they didn't look far. They wanted to stay in Weedsport. "Weedsport's been good to us," Derric said. "We tried very hard not to leave."

At first, the Slocums couldn't find any spaces in the village big enough for their ambitions. But then they took a second look at one literally across the street from them: a brick former Key Bank building at 8931 N. Seneca St. After drawing it out on graph paper, the Slocums determined that with a few additions, they could make the space work.

The space finds the look and feel of the brewery catching up to its award-winning beer. Its rustic tasting room, with abundant wooden surfaces and hues, was designed and built out by the Slocums themselves in the year and a half since their purchase of the property. They were helped by architect Jill Fudo and Auburn's A&M Graphics, which covered one of the brewery's 16-foot garage doors with its logo, the face of the Slocums' dog, Trooper. Only an unmovable bank safe had to be worked around, but the Slocums seamlessly repurposed it into a walk-in cooler.

"Everything else was an open canvas," Derric said.

"This space really allows our vision for our environment to start to come to life," Kristen added.

The tasting room has the capacity for about 60 people, triple the size of Lunkenheimer's previous one. That's proved especially helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Slocums said. So has their new wood-fired pizza oven, which allows them to meet the food requirement of New York's guidance. Before the new space opened, they cooked pizzas there and carried them across the street to the old one.

"That wasn't part of the business plan," Derric said with a laugh. "But you do what you gotta do to survive during a pandemic."

The oven is located inside one of the two additions the Slocums made to the 1,550-square-foot building, taking it up to about 3,200 total. The other addition houses their brewing equipment. They're continuing to use the same 5-barrel system, but under the space's 20-foot ceilings will be five new 15-barrel unitanks, a combination of a fermenter and a bright tank. The first of them will arrive in December or January, Derric said. So the batches of beer he and Kristen make will be the same size, but they'll be able to produce significantly more.

The tasting room also has 12 taps to the previous one's eight. That and the increased production will give the Slocums "more room to play" with their beers, Derric said, like trying their hands at new trends. But Lunkenheimer will mostly continue focusing on the kölsches, pale ales and other classic styles that have come to shape the brewery's reputation as what Kristen called a "hidden gem." The Slocums have collected several awards making those styles, too, including six medals at the New York State Craft Beer Competition in the last two years, more than any other brewery in the state.

Because of the pandemic, a bigger percentage of that beer than ever is being canned. The Slocums use a mobile line to do it about once every three weeks, they said. And though they used to distribute to several accounts in the region, since March the demand for packaged beer has been so high that most of Lunkenheimer's is sold at the Weedsport brewery and its satellite location in Sodus Bay. Derric added that business there has been better than he and Kristen expected. Their only other current accounts are the Saltbox Smokehouse in Sodus and the Shurfine supermarket in Weedsport.

The Slocums also feel their focus on classic styles will help them complement Prison City Brewing's new production facility, which will open in November a little more than five miles south on Route 34. With its national reputation for India pale ales, imperial stouts and other popular styles, the Auburn brewery will pull many a beer fan off the Thruway. The Slocums expect many of them to stop at theirs on the way, as those who travel to breweries tend to visit more than one, Derric noted. But he and Kristen don't want the experience at Lunkenheimer to be the same as the experience at Prison City.

"I feel like we cater to a little bit of a different crowd," Derric said. "We don't get as much notoriety in the hardcore beer scene, but in grander scheme of beer drinkers we have a pretty good reputation."

Some of those beer fans won't know about Lunkenheimer until they see it from the road. And though the brewery is now visible from Routes 34 and 31, the Slocums still want to do more to develop the outside of the space, such as setting up a pavilion akin to an Oktoberfest tent in the property's parking lot. They want that not only for Lunkenheimer, they said, but for Weedsport.

"Now that we're kind of out from the shadows in the back corner and kind of a dominant figure in the village, we're hoping that helps the village thrive," Derric said.