New Glarus Brewing Adds a $55M Four-Story Brewhouse to Its Hilltop

Craft brewing consolidated hard over the last five years. New Glarus is doubling down instead.

The Wisconsin brewer, which sells only inside its home state, broke ground in October 2024 on a $55 million, 65,000-square-foot, four-story addition at its Hilltop campus. Keller Construction of Kaukauna, an employee-owned Wisconsin firm, is the general contractor. At the one-year mark the job was reported on time and on budget.

Project Scope

The addition carries a new brewhouse that roughly doubles production capacity, plus the Sugar River Distillery, an expanded tasting room, offices, retail, a beer depot, a beer garden and a new parking lot. Construction is scheduled to finish in fall 2026, with public opening pushed to early summer 2027 to allow equipment start-up and commissioning.

That gap between substantial completion and opening is the part worth reading. Brewery work is process construction wearing a hospitality skin, and the tank, piping and control commissioning sequence sets the schedule, not the drywall.

Why It Matters

Vertical additions on working production sites are the hardest kind of brewery job. The existing brewhouse has to keep running through the tie-ins, and every shutdown window is negotiated against a sales calendar. Doing it four stories up on a ridge site, with a public tasting room operating below, is a coordination problem more than a construction one.

It is also a real capital commitment from a single-state brewer at a moment when national craft brands are closing plants. New Glarus is betting that scarcity, not distribution, is the durable strategy.

Project Team & Details