Inside the beer company, the bottles of Abita Amber keep rolling through the production line and eventually right off the shelves of stores all across the United States.

According to company president David Blossman, “In the past three years we’ve been close to averaging about 20-percent a year of growth and that’s why we’re investing 6 million dollars in a company that’s very small, only about 14 and a half million dollars in sales this year.”
 
It’s an investment that is brining eight new huge tanks into the brewery this week, each lowered through the roof with a big crane. “Together with the three that we got earlier in the year around July, that’s going to increase our capacity to cellar our product and ferment it by about 50-percent,” said Blossman
 
The Abita Beer factory is one of the most popular tourist destinations on the North Shore and now this update will also give visitors a behind the scenes look. The brewery has always been famous for the free beer served at the end of it’s tour and now anyone taking that tour will be able to throw back a cool one in a brand new, expanded French Quarter beer garden. The room will have a full bar, several seating areas, gas lamps and a tin ceiling.

The tours are on hold right now because of construction but Blossman expects they will resume in January.
 
The expansion also called for the addition of eight employees this year and the company is more than doubling its warehouse space, making more room for more beer said Blossman, “We’re building over our existing warehouse so we don’t lose any production time and then we’ll deconstruct that after that is finished.”
 
Each year, Abita Beer puts out 62-thousand barrels of beer and 3-thousand barrels of root beer.

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