16 Nov Jekyll Brewing Brings Its Beers and Restaurant to Downtown Alpharetta This Summer
The Alpharetta-based brewery expands to Alpharetta City Center and includes a restaurant and a rooftop patio
by Beth McKibben Mar 19, 2019
Alpharetta-based Jekyll Brewing is expanding to the Exchange Building at Alpharetta City Center this summer. The brewery’s second location occupies the upper floor of the building, which includes a restaurant, tasting room, and a rooftop patio three stories above Academy and Market streets in the heart of the north metro Atlanta city.
Brewing capacity at the Alpharetta City Center facility should be around 3,000 barrels a year. Dishes at Jekyll’s restaurant, like Nashville hot chicken, paninis and burgers, oysters, and snacks such as pork rinds, are meant to pair with the brewery’s beers. Some seating in the restaurant surrounds the small brewing system, allowing people to watch beers being made or speak with the brew master.
The latter half of the Alpharetta’s 19th century economy centered around processing and selling cotton from area farms. Many of the buildings along the city’s downtown streets and commercial district at the time ginned, stored, or shipped cotton and seed.
“We designed this building to be the icon of downtown Alpharetta and we had in mind an iconic operator, so Jekyll Brewing is spot on,” Cheri Morris, president of Morris & Fellows says. The developers tapped into the city’s manufacturing past in the design for the Exchange Building.
The brewery’s name itself nods to Georgia’s long brewing history and what is said to be the South’s first brewery, founded on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia in the 18th century.
Jekyll’s original location is on Marconi Drive, east of downtown Alpharetta. It currently brews Hop Dang Diggity IPA, an American brown ale called Cooter Brown, as well as other lagers, Kolsch-style, and seasonal brews.
“Being located in downtown Alpharetta, in this spectacular space, will allow us to serve our customers so much better,” Jekyll Brewing founder Michael Lundmark says in the prepared statement. “Thanks to the prominence and convenience of this location, we’ll be able to offer that and more.”
