The brewery, which this year invested in its own brewing equipment for the first time, has had an offer accepted on a 4,000sq ft property in the city, which it hopes to operate as a brewery, restaurant and bar.
The venue will house Left Handed Giant’s new 15bbl (barrel) brewhouse, eight fermentation/conditioning vessels to package from and six 1,000l tanks to pour beers directly from the brewery to customers’ glasses. It will be housed in a former industrial site in the city centre, on the banks of the city’s floating harbour.
The brewery also has a local food operator lined up to sublet the 1st floor of the building as a restaurant, while there will also be a simpler bar menu for visitors in the main bar area.
Meanwhile, Left Handed Giant will continue to operate at its existing site in the St Phillips area of the city, where it has an established taproom and storage facility.
Barrel store and sour beer facility
The brewery intends to develop a barrel store and sour beer production facility at this site, which will contain more than 100 barrels, three 10bbl foudres (wooden vats) and six 12bbl fermenters, along with its current brewhouse.
The final stage of the project will involve packaging beers produced at the brewpub into 440ml cans and keg, which will take place in a separate unit at the St Phillips site.
The project is estimated to cost in the region of £750,000 (including a 10% contingency allowance) and the brewery hopes to raise this money through crowdfunding, starting in March 2018.
Left Handed Giant managing director Bruce Gray told The Morning Advertiser: “When we decided that we wanted to expand our business into a brewpub in the centre of Bristol, we also knew the funding requirements were going to be pretty far beyond what we have direct access too ourselves."
'World class' venue
Gray continued: “We explored the options available to us, and crowdfunding just seemed like such a great option. Not only will it allow us to raise the funds without leaving ourselves in huge amounts of debt, it will also allow us to put some ownership of the business into the very hands of the people who drink our beer.
“It's always been important to us that we are utterly transparent as to who we are, what our beers are about and how we run our business.
“This method of funding allows us to take that to the next level by bringing the people who drink our beers into the ownership of the company.”
Explaining the choice of location, Gray added: “We were shown around Finzels Reach (the proposed site) almost a year ago and from the moment I stepped through the front door, I fell in love.
“We want to create a world-class venue presenting epic, fresh beers in the heart of Bristol. To be able to do that in a building so centrally located, which is steeped in brewing tradition, is just beyond anything we could have hoped.”