Future Brewery

Mocama has selected Studio BNA, an Athens, GA based architectural firm, to design the entire facility including structural interiors, landscaping, MEP, and both civil and structural engineering. Studio BNA has extensive experience in commercial and hospitality design. Their expertise with the unique requirements of brewery design has been honed while working with Creature Comforts Brewing Company of Athens, GA designing and overseeing construction of their 46,000 square foot expansion. Michael Oliveri Studios and Poucher Woodworks will custom design and fabricate all furniture, fixtures, and lighting.

The primary goal of our design team is to create an immersive brand experience for our customers in a space that is refined, comfortable, and functional. The former car showroom has been reimagined as a midcentury lounge where guests will feel a familiarity upon entering as if the brewery had always been there. Our stainless steel brewhouse, packaging lines, and cellar will be visible from the taproom through floor to ceiling windows. This view will create a curiosity about our process equipment and encourages customers to take our brewery tours. Packaged beer to go and Mocama branded merchandise will be easily accessible from the taproom and 6 short-term parking places reserved for our store customers.

The Tap Room

The taproom will be designed to accommodate private parties while remaining open to the public for normal business. The space will serve as a taproom, exhibition space, and music venue. On a quarterly basis, we will exhibit new world class contemporary art. Working with the audio experts at TSAV, acoustics will be optimized for live music and stand up comedy. Groups will experience a special environment that is a great alternative to more traditional event venues. We will offer audio-visual systems ideal for presentations, sporting event viewing, or other occasions. Groups can, subject to our approval, specify their choice of live music, beer list, and caterer. We plan to optimize the terms and pricing of our event space rental offering with the input of managers from the Omni Amelia Island Plantation and the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island. It is our expectation that bookings originating from these two resorts will represent a significant portion of our event revenue. In addition, we anticipate working with local and non-local event planners who often choose Amelia Island when planning destination events such as wedding and corporate parties.

The Production Area

The 7000 square foot former service area of the Ford dealership will serve as our production area. It is accessible from South 7th Street through a 15 foot wide overhead door that is ideal to accommodate delivery of our production equipment and raw materials. Shipping of packaged beer for distribution will be through a separate 8 foot cooler door.

With a peak ceiling height of 26 feet, it will accommodate our 120 barrel cellar vessels. So when demand calls for it, Oktopus’ brewers will be able to brew 120 barrels of beer per day which makes our maximum annual production volume roughly 35,000 barrels.

The production area will be laid out to maximize efficiency and safety for our brewers, cellarmen, and packaging team. Our canning line, keg washing and filling machine, and walk-in cooler will be placed in this area for efficient and safe use of our forklift. The 1250 square foot warehouse area for storage of ingredients and packaging materials is easily accessible from the production area.

Mocama also intends to add a pilot system in the production area to enable small batch brewing that will contribute to research and development, recipe formulation, and ingredient analysis

Quality Control Lab

Our facility will have a quality control lab easily accessible from the production area. The lab’s purpose is to monitor production and packaging to ensure consistency in taste and quality. Initially we will focus on basic quality control functions such as yeast management, microbiological control, and fermentation control, analysis and tracking. We will outsource some analyses to Brewing and Distilling Analytical Services LLC, an American Society of Brewing Chemists(ASBC) and TTB certified lab in Lexington, Kentucky. As production volume increases we will purchase additional equipment and bring all measurement and testing in house.

The Barrel Room

The Mocama Barrel and Blending Room is built with experimentation in mind, a place where the ancient alchemy between alcohol and oak create a range of sublime and unorthodox beers. Kept at 67 degrees and almost foggy to minimize evaporation, this room is a sensory oasis during the summer months. Our oak barrels contain ales and lagers that are undergoing fermentation by an army of wild yeast and bacteria. Blending these barrels into complex and sometimes sour beer is an art form celebrated for the last 2000 years. Wine and spirits barrels (casks, puncheons, and foeders too) that previously held Widow Jane bourbon, Vulson rye, and Chateau Margaux will be filled with every style of beer imaginable, then aged and blended into supernatural elixirs. Each beer takes its own time to finish fermenting, anywhere from 3 months to 5 years in barrels before being packaged and bottle conditioned.

The Kitchen

Our commercial kitchen will allow caterers and guest chefs to prepare a wide array of menu items for our customers. Design input will be sought from several Amelia Island chefs who will use it most often, including the catering chefs at the Omni and the Ritz-Carlton. Areas for cleaning and washing, refrigerated and frozen storage, multiple prep areas and stations, and finally service lines will be organized to optimize performance and efficiency.

The Biergarten

A fully restored Airstream Argosy (a Beerstream) adjacent to the brewery will provide convenient access to beer and food for those customers wishing to remain outdoors. Tastefully constructed iron fencing and gates will enclose the lushly landscaped biergarten allowing customers to enjoy a beautiful and relaxed tropical garden. Providing capacity for an additional 125 guest, this area will increase the brewery's revenue stream significantly during spring and fall. The biergarten will also serve as an additional venue for live music.

Family Friendly

We hope and expect that Mocama will be frequented by families with children of all ages. For this reason, we have thought about what younger Mocama visitors would enjoy while mom and dad relax and imbibe. During the warmer months, our biergarten Airstream will serve Mocama Italian sodas and carbonated waters made with the same fruit we use in our beers. Snow cones made with our brewing water and real fruit syrups will be a sought-after treat, prompting children to ask their parents if they can go to the brewery after the beach.

Although we will not be offering supervised childcare, our landscape plans include an area that will entertain and quarantine kids that are prone to wander. This area could one day have a water feature, a fountain that cools and washes the sand off the little ones.

Parking

Customers will be encouraged to park in the Mocama lot just to the south of the brewery across Gum Street. Using a crosswalk, customers will travel past the large glass windows of our taproom and through our revolving door front entrance. We are evaluating the installation of a grass paving system that we believe will eliminate the need to build stormwater retention ponds. We will have a large rack for customer bicycles in front of our retail shop facing 8th Street, and there will also be approximately 7 short term parking spots there for retail customers picking up beer to go. Mocama employees will have a designated parking lot with 12 spots next to the building, just below the stairs that lead to the employee area on the second floor. Employee overflow will be along 7th Street where we have approximately 16 open parallel parking spots. Employees will be encouraged to ride bicycles and ride share as much as possible. Mocama will have a small fleet of company bikes for employees and guests to use to get around the island.