Firestone Walker Brewing Company is a brewery in Paso Robles, Central Coast California, and Buellton, California. Firestone Walker is California's fourth-largest craft brewery and is known for producing hoppy ales. Firestone Walker was the sixteenth largest craft brewery in the U.S. in beer sales volume in 2014. The company utilizes a patented variation of the Burton Union system developed in England in the 1800s in its oak barrel fermentation process. Firestone Walker was World Beer Cup Champion Brewery for mid-sized breweries in 2004, 2006, 2010, and 2012.
History
Firestone Walker Brewing Company was formed in 1996 in Santa Barbara County by David Walker and Adam Firestone, son of Brooks Firestone and great-great grandson of Harvey Firestone who started the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. The brewery started on the Firestone family vineyard in Los Olivos, California and moved to Paso Robles in 2001. The company has expanded twice in six years. In 2001, they purchased former SLO Brewing Company located in Paso Robles and added 17 interior fermenters, four 500 bbl exterior fermenters, a KHS keg line, and Krones bottling line. The company later acquired Humboldt Brewing Company and changed the name to Nectar Ales in 2005. In 2006, its Firestone Pale Ale was named "Best Beer in America" by Men's Journal and in 2008, the company released Union Jack, an India Pale Ale. Firestone Walker began the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival in 2011, which brings together select breweries from around the United States and other countries that do not distribute to the West Coast. In 2012, the company sold Nectar Ales to Total Beverage Solution. In 2015, Firestone Walker sold to Duvel Moortgat Brewery, a Belgian-operated brewery known for their Belgian strong pale ale. Firestone Walker began canning beer in 2015, using a German-engineered KHS canning line built on the Paso Robles brewery campus that can produce and fill 400 cans per minute.
Operations
Firestone Walker Brewing Company is one of only a few commercial brewers in the world to maintain a variation of Burton Union fermentation system that uses interconnected oaken barrels. Beer critic Tom Acitelli attributes an "oaky" taste in the beer to the addition of oak spirals or chips during production. In 2012, the company opened a separate wild ale facility in Buellton, California called Barrelworks that ferments and ages beer in used wine barrels from Paso Robles, as well as bourbon, brandy and tequila barrels and used barrels from Firestone Walker’s barrel-aged beer program. In 2014, Firestone Walker produced 151,000 barrels.
