Rockwell Brewery founders prepare to open second Frederick location with more live music

In this episode of the UnCapped podcast, host Chris Sands talks with the cofounders of Rockwell Brewery, Matt Thrasher and Paul Tinney, about their new location, which will consist of increased production space, as well as a much larger taproom. The new facility will open May 5. Here is an excerpt of their talk.

UnCapped: We are sitting in the currently-under-construction, brand new Rockwell location on the north end of Frederick. I hadn’t driven over here in forever, and it does not look the same. There are a lot more houses now and a lot more businesses. It’s crazy in Frederick how you can stay out of one area for so long that it looks completely different when you go there the next time.

Paul Tinney: A lot of growth.

UnCapped: How long has this been in the works?

Tinney: We’re coming up on two years in the summer. The egg was hatched back [in 2020]. We were looking for a location. We wanted very much to own our own building, and we courted a number of potential locations that just didn’t meet the criteria for what we needed, for the amount of space, where it was, parking, not to mention the other one — what’s that other one? — oh yeah, price.

UnCapped: You picked a time when real estate got a little crazy. I’m sure there are benefits to being a part of an industrial park. It looks like there are other customer-facing businesses here.

Tinney: Oh yeah, a number of them. What I love is that we are in what was originally designed as the Frederick loop, the beltway, so to speak: Monocacy Boulevard, which connects 15 to 70 and goes all the way around. … This [location] is great. Great access, great traffic, great visibility.

UnCapped: What size system did you end up with?

Tinney: Our brewhouse is 25 barrels.

ROCKWELL BREWERY

880 N. East St., #201, Frederick 301-732-4880 rockwellbrewery.com

UnCapped: Your production area is nice, but even while under construction, the taproom looks like it’s going to be very, very impressive.

Thrasher: That’s what we’re shooting for — to raise the bar, just for ourselves. We feel like we’re bursting at the seams right now where we’re located. When we first started, Paul and I had a discussion, like, “Let’s just focus on this. Let’s stay small. Everybody else is jumping up and getting big. Let’s just stay focused on this tasting room.”

Tinney: Now we call it wise and measured.

Thrasher: Hopefully that’s what it turns out to be. Like I said, we were just bursting at the seams and kind of felt like we had our hands tied — everything from music to how many people we could have in there to how much we could produce.

UnCapped: Yeah, because having live music is a big part of what you guys have always wanted to do at the brewery.

UnCapped: That’s quite a jump from your previous one.

Tinney: Yep, it is.

UnCapped: The fermentation tanks on East Street are 7-barrel?

Tinney: Yeah, sevens.

UnCapped: And what are you filling here?

Matt Thrasher: Twenties and 50s.

Tinney: It’s easily 10x in capacity annually.

UnCapped: Is the plan to use that up in distribution or mainly in the massive taproom that you’re building?

Thrasher: Well, ideally, it would be in the taproom, right?

Tinney: Yeah, that was a big part, and we found ourselves having to take it offsite, which isn’t easy. Hyper Local [Brew Fest] is a great success, we can get over 2,000 people in there, but, again, we gotta move everything and market the heck out of it. It’s something we’ll annually do, but we want to be able to have big bands on a weekly basis. That’s the goal.

This excerpt has been edited for space and clarity. Listen to the full podcast at fnppodcasts.com/ uncapped. Got UnCapped news? Email csands@newspost.com.