Ratchet Brewery Purchases Seven Brides Brewing in Expansion

The gear heads at the barely one-year-old Ratchet Brewery out of Salem have announced plans to open a location in Silverton in the former Seven Brides Brewing spot. Seven Brides closed suddenly in October 2018 and the owners have been mum on whether they would continue to brew at all. It turns out that Ratchet has leased the space and purchased the 15 barrel brewhouse in Silverton.Ratchet Brewing is only a 1/2 barrel nano brewery with a small tasting room in Salem, where it produced around 40 barrels of beer in 2018. Ratchet contract brews at fellow Salem brewers Santiam Brewing, which amounted to an additional 200 barrels of production in 2018; that helps make Ratchet a quick up-and-comer in Oregon's capital city. With the purchase of Seven Brides Brewing's assets, co-owner Dan Miletta says Ratchet will stop contract brewing and plans to produce 600 barrels out of the new Silverton location in 2019 while still hoping to crank out another 60 barrels from the 1.2 barrel brewhouse in Salem. But, even with the big expansion in production, Miletta says:"We have no plans of signing with a distributor. Our goal will be to self distribute for as long as we can. I think we can self distribute up to about 4000 BBLs a year. The longer we can keep everything under our control the better."Ratchet Brewing got the keys to the Silverton expansion on March 1st but is awaiting TTB licensing and remodeling the taproom before it can re-open the space in 2-4 months. The former Seven Brides pub does have a kitchen, but Miletta is focusing on the beer first, with a priority to get the 15bbl up and going and then the taproom open with a food program to come last.[gallery columns="4" size="medium" ids="33699,33698,33697,33696"](Above: images from Ratchet Brewery's Salem, OR taproom and brewery)Part of the remodel of Seven Brides will be to emulate the look and feel of Ratchet's small Salem-taproom with that classic nano garage brewery vibe."There is to much wood inside for me," says Miletta of the former Seven Brides space. "We will add some more metal and relaxing the space in our colors grey, red, white and black."Ratchet's Salem tasting room hosts regular motorcycle club meet-ups and their beers are usually pub classics like Amber, Red, Stout and even Irish-style ales but they often add or tweak them with unusual ingredients or add them to weekly live firkin tappings.Follow Ratchet Brewery on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Ratchetbrewery/