The Brutalist is a 3,500-barrel/year collaborative contract brewing facility in St. Petersburg, Fla., headed by Aric Parker of King State Beer. The Brutalist has its own line of branded of brews that it sells out of its taproom, Temple of Beer. And as a contract brewer, it sells brewing and packaging capacity to high-end craft brewers looking to scale with the help of higher-volume professional equipment. Meanwhile, King State Beer—the beer-brewing arm of a King State operation that’s also known as a coffee roaster, coffee cold-brewer, and breakfast and cocktail bar—owns The Brutalist Brewery and in a sense is its own biggest customer with its line of branded King State Beer varieties. Perhaps this unique arrangement makes for a tangled web of stakeholders, but it’s hard to complain when the result is innovative, artisanal craft brew under an evolving variety of banners, brands, and titles.
“King State’s lineup has our lagers and more traditional styles, with the occasional sour. The Brutalist tends toward on-trend brews like hazy IPAs or pastry stouts, and we have the freedom to take it wherever we want. And finally, our contractors are mostly smaller breweries or sophisticated home brewers that are willing to pay a premium to grow their footprint or up their production,” Parker says, disambiguating the three primary constituencies of King State, Brutalist, and contract work.
As he built out the brewery’s new canning line in June of 2022, Parker began with the filler/seamer, working backward from there. After some extensive comparison shopping, he landed on a 50-can/min CB50C integrated counter-pressure in-line filler and seamer from Pneumatic Scale Angelus (PSA), a BW Packaging company.
