Maryland’s largest producer of craft beer paid $2.55 million for nearly 32 acres of farmland near the Frederick Municipal Airport to create a brewery five times its current 50,000-square-foot plant. The larger facility would have boosted output to 8 million cases a year, up from less than 2 million in 2016.
Now those plans are on “permanent hold,” CEO Jim Caruso said.
“The primary goal of [the expansion] project was to ensure that Flying Dog will have an uninterrupted supply of beer as it continues to grow,” Caruso said in a statement. “Because of regulatory and legislative issues that relate to all breweries in Maryland, Flying Dog has put that project on permanent hold and is developing other viable options to ensure that it has an uninterrupted supply of beer for its markets into the future.”
But he didn’t specify what issues he was referring to. Meanwhile, Caruso said “Flying Dog is in the early stages of getting back into the distillery business, but no specifics have been confirmed at this time.”