Recently, we had the opportunity to go inside of Peak Drift Brewing Company with Jason Snyder, Director of Operations and Sales + Ashley Kinard-Short, an award-winning Master Brewer. Jason and Ashley showed us all of the brewery’s ca-pub-ilities during a hard hat tour — and let us tell you — they’re going ale out for this one.

Safety first — touring Peak Drift wearing hard hats. | Photo by COLAtoday team

The facility will total 64,849 sqft and include a ~25,000 sqft brewery, as well as:

A restaurant
Entertainment spaces
A patio
A gym
And more

The full facility is scheduled to open sometime in 2023, but you’ll be able to get your hands on canned brews in local grocery stores before being able to visit the location.

DYK Peak Drift will be located (3452 N. Main St.) at the historic site of the Stone Manufacturing Company, built in the 1930s? Because of its historical relevance to Columbia, while the building is being rehabilitated, it will keep many of the original historic elements.

Peak Drift will be the first of its kind in Columbia to use new innovative machinery, including:

A state-of-the-art packaging system
Fruit processing equipment for making in-house purées
A deaerated water system, which allows the brewery to make carbonated drinks

Amongst the new machinery, Peak Drift will be the second company in the nation to own a $4 million commercial high-volume digital can printer. The printer allows the brewery to print in-house graphics on cans — making them 100% recyclable — and offer digital printing to other breweries in Columbia.

“This machine will give the local guys the ability to do what the big dogs can,” Jason said. “And when Dawn Staley wins the next national championship and wants her face on a can, we’ll package her a hard seltzer within a day.”

A day is a pretty fast turnaround, but no problem for the new mash filter system which cuts the brew time for a beer in half. When working at maximum capacity, Peak Drift will be able to pump out ~8 million cans of beer per year — that’s 350,0000 cases, 50,000 kegs, and 25,000 barrels per year.

And we’re just talking beers. That capacity has the ability to increase when it produces a rotating selection of high-quality craft beers, hard ciders, hard seltzers, nitro coffees, sparkling waters, and CBD waters.

The goal is to have the brewery up and running before the end of this year, but if you can’t wait that long, you can taste some Peak Drift Brews inside of its micro-brewery located inside Smoked. (1643 Main St.).