- April 26, 2024
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Ormond Brewing will feature a tasting room and beer garden, as well as grow its own hops outside.
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
A new business is brewing in town — literally.
Ormond Brewing Company is busy making original craft beer, getting ready for its Nov. 30 grand opening, where the public can try the new hometown brews 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. at their brewery located in the industrial park at 301 Division Ave., No. 15.
Co-owners Justin Robinson and Clifford Stevenson, of Ormond Beach, have been making their own home brews for about seven years.
“We started collaborating and decided to start our own brewery,” Robinson said.
Their main business will be to brew craft beers for restaurants. They received approval from the Ormond Beach City Commission in September for the tasting room and beer garden.
“We want people to see where our beer is produced, so they know it’s a local beer,” said Robinson. “We’ll be doing tours, also.”
Although they are located in an industrial park, there is an area beside their facility that they are currently landscaping for the beer garden.
“We’re pretty fortunate to have this nice outdoor area,” Robinson said. “There’s plenty of parking.”
Having a beer garden at a brewery in a business park is not unusual.
“In Jacksonville, there are two or three places like this,” he said. “It’s becoming common.”
They also plan to grow hops outside in the garden, enough to a release a beer about once a year.
They will have a soft opening in a few weeks and plan to have a reception for restaurant owners. They have tentative plans to be open to the public 5-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Although they can market to restaurants, their license requires them to sell their beer through a distributor. They are currently in discussions with a couple in the area.
They have been working at the facility for almost three weeks, after getting approval from the city, which included a zoning variance.
“The city looked at the size of the kettles, how much water we were going to use and other things,” Robinson said.
They received a federal license to brew beer on the Friday before the government shutdown; if they hadn't, their operation would have been delayed for weeks or even months. But Robinson doesn’t call it luck.
“We believe in hard work and planning,” Robinson said. “We applied for the license a year ago.”
Robinson, who grew up in Ormond Beach, has a degree in biology and worked for the Department of Environmental Protection. Stevenson moved to Ormond Beach after retiring from the U.S. Navy.
The first two beers they kegged at the facility were a cream ale and a brown ale, and many more are planned, including IPAs, stouts and a red ale. They are working on names for their creations.
They took part in the Food Wine and Beer festival in early November in Daytona Beach and won the peoples' choice award for the best beer, competing against Stella, Sweetwater, Green Flash, Widmer Brothers, Florida Beer Co, Victory, Southern Tier, Goose Island and New Belgian Brewing Co.
"We were quite proud of that achievement," Robinson said.
Brew pubs are starting to pop up around Volusia County, but there are few breweries that market to restaurants. Ormond Beach was chosen as a location, Stevenson said, because they saw there were not many breweries in this part of Central Florida.
“It’s wide open,” he said.
“It’s historical and rich in culture,” Robinson added. “We’re going to bring craft-beer culture.”
