Remember the Stone Company Store South Park we told you about? A few days ago we revealed the location when a friend spotted the notice of a permit to sell alcohol, and one detail of that brought up some interesting questions. The type of permit Stone Brewing Co. is applying for at their upcoming South Park location is a “Type 23 – Small Beer Manufacturer”. As you might imagine that suggests they’ll be making beer on premises in South Park. We confirmed with Stone that they will indeed have a small pilot brewing system on site. They’ll be brewing in South Park. Yes, if all goes according to plan 30th Street will be getting a (small) brewery.

This raises some interesting possibilities, that we by no means have any insight into, just speculation and hope.

One possible reason for this could have to do with California liquor laws, this could be a clever way to be able to fill growlers. We won’t get into all of the details, but the way we understand it is that in California, only breweries are allowed to fill growlers. Stone says the focus of the Stone Company Store South Park will be to provide the local community with fresh beer to go, so obviously growler fills will play a big part in this. Having a brewery on site will allow them to fill growlers, not only with beer brewed on site, but also with beer brewed at the main brewery in Escondido. If the Stone Company Store South Park weren’t a brewery they wouldn’t be able to fill growlers at all.

Another, more interesting possibility is that they could produce some beers in the South Park location that they otherwise don’t normally make. Breweries use small pilot systems to test new ideas, brewing on a small scale means that if a beer turns out terribly the financial loss is lessened. We could see some new beers, experimental beers and otherwise not normally produced beers from Stone coming out of the South Park location. Again, this is all (hopeful) speculation, but there could be some interesting small batch, draft only beers coming out of their South Park location in the future.

Another bit of news we confirmed with Stone is that they’re seeking the ability to sell on premises tasters and pints, but again, their focus is on beer to go. They emphasize that the Stone Company Store South Park isn’t a pub.

One thing to remember is that this is all subject to change. Stone is still in the process of applying for their permit to sell alcohol. The guys from West Coaster ran into Greg Koch, CEO of Stone just last night and chatted about the upcoming South Park location. He suggested that if you want to see the Stone Company Store South Park get the proper permits they need to open you write letters to the ABC showing support.