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Owen Ogletree's
Monthly Brewtopia Brewsletter
July 2, 2026
Owen is founder/editor of Brewtopia.info, a group beer trip organizer, columnist for Southern Brew News & Beer Connoisseur Magazine, lecturer at Knoxville's Brewing & Distilling Center, founder of the Atlanta Cask Ale Tasting, and a BJCP National Beer Judge.
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Follow our craft beer adventures...
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- StillFire Brewing “Steers into the Skid” with Second Brewery & Taproom
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By Don Beistle
 Phil Farrell, brewmaster at Georgia’s StillFire Brewing, shrugs off an unsubtle question about the wisdom of opening a big new brewery right now. Of course, StillFire’s owners struggled with whether and how to proceed with longstanding plans to open a second, larger brewery and taproom in Smyrna, GA. But they went all-in anyhow. “Craft beer may be in a skid,” he says, “but you need to steer into a skid to stay out of the ditch.”
Farrell would know. StillFire opened its original Suwanee, GA location in October 2019 — almost 5 months to the day before the start of pandemic lockdowns. “COVID-19 rules caused our taproom to shut down, so risk adversity became part of the company DNA,” he says. If it’s hard to square that statement with a massive expansion undertaken amid a wrenching downturn in craft brewing, here’s the logic: “Having a second location, especially one that fits our business model, makes the company both more survivable and more flexible in the long term.”
The new location
StillFire Smyrna is a super-sized version of StillFire Suwanee. The 25,000-square-foot brewery and taproom has multiple patios, a beer garden, private event space, rooftop skydeck, taqueria, and food truck bays. As in Suwanee, it adjoins a city park and playground and is emphatically kid- and dog-friendly.
Bars scattered throughout the facility feature 78 taps pouring StillFire’s award-winning beers as well as house-made wine, cocktails, mocktails, and root beer. Because it is a production brewery (not a brewpub), StillFire can sell only alcohol that it produces. However, soft drinks and other non-alcoholic beverages produced elsewhere are permitted.
The StillFire team wanted the Smyrna location to complement the original, improving on what worked well and fixing what did not. “Our second location was designed to have a larger taproom with more distinct areas,” explains Farrell. “We wanted to be able to accommodate special events without shutting the taproom down.” The larger facility also has space for “a proper barrel room” that will enable Farrell and company to create “some really special beers.”
Why Smyrna?
 Smyrna is one of Atlanta’s fast-growing northern suburbs, with a downtown just over two miles from Truist Park, the home of the Atlanta Braves since 2017. Smyrna Mayor Derek Norton recalls getting an earful about the city’s moribund downtown during his 2019 mayoral bid. That was the peak of the pre-pandemic craft beer boom, and neighborhood breweries were being hyped as a magic pill to bring fresh life to hollowed-out shopping districts and shuttered industrial plants.
Smyrna’s Economic Development Director, Andrea Worthy, cited revitalization of the downtown area as the city’s main reason for courting StillFire. Nearby cities with new breweries were reportedly attracting an average of 1,000 to 2,000 new visitors to their downtowns each week. Worthy contrasted the allure of a brewery to that of a restaurant or coffee shop: “It’s really a community gathering place that invites a lot of other visitors to downtown [and] increases foot traffic for other businesses.”
StillFire’s original location opened as Norton was wrapping up his campaign, and the new mayor was impressed by the reports coming out of Suwanee. “The City of Smyrna was interested in attracting a brewery to Market Village, their city center,” says StillFire’s Farrell. “The mayor, city council, and city planner visited us, spoke to their counterparts in Suwanee, and were excited by the positive comments. Then the conversation with us started.”
It didn’t hurt that one of StillFire’s brewers and its chief operating officer both were Smyrna residents. But what really drove the conversation were the physical similarities between the Suwanee and Smyrna sites and a shared vision of a family-friendly community hub built for lingering and lubricated with beer. The spot Smyrna had in mind for a brewery “mirrored most of the elements of our Suwanee brewery,” says Farrell. “Like Suwanee, we already had a connection to the community. And with green space, a vibrant city center, and enthusiastic residents, Smyrna had all that we were looking for.”
Obliterating the timeline
 So, StillFire purchased a .94-acre parcel from the city of Smyrna in January 2022 intending to have the brewery up and running by summer 2023. But the Omicron wave of COVID-19 hit just before Christmas 2021, and pandemic disruptions stretched deep into the new year. Prices kept rising. Construction crews and materials remained in short supply. People still weren’t going out like before. Money was tight. Time passed.
A groundbreaking ceremony was finally held in September 2023 — and progress promptly stalled. Farrell explains, “We had lots of rain, freezing temperatures, and utility issues to overcome. There were abandoned, underground foundations that had been forgotten about for decades that blocked our utility access, causing a lot more digging and delay than we anticipated. The gas line was a lot deeper than even the gas company thought, obliterating our original timeline.”
Preparations expected to take weeks required nearly a year and a half to complete. StillFire eventually issued a press release at the end of February 2025 to confirm that construction on the brewery was, at long last, “officially underway.” Wags on Reddit took note, joking “They also ‘broke ground’ way back in September 2023,” and “StillFire are absolutely breaking the hell out of that ground over there in Smyrna.”
But StillFire got the last laugh when the Smyrna brewery and taproom opened on schedule (well, revised schedule) one year later.
A grand opening
 “I think the entire city of Smyrna came out for our grand opening,” marvels Farrell. “If you had asked me to predict my wildest expectations before March 14, we easily doubled that.” The event caught the attention of local news outlets, and online reviews and social media mentions have been overwhelmingly positive. Smyrna residents say the taproom is buzzing all the time and the neighboring park is livelier than ever. StillFire Smyrna seems to have been worth the wait for all concerned.
The law of unintended consequences
Two days after StillFire Smyrna’s grand opening, Cobb County election officials determined that the Smyrna Community Center, right next door to the just-opened brewery, could no longer be used as a polling place because of its proximity to the brewery. Georgia law prohibits the sale of alcohol within 250 feet of a polling location. The solution? Until or unless the law is changed, voting will be moved to a recreation center 4 miles away in Marietta.
What’s next?
First things first. Farrell expects it will take “a few months to get the two breweries running in harmony.” But then, “once Smyrna is fully operational, we will be freed up to work on a bunch of new beers just in time for summer and fall enjoyment.”
After that, Farrell is itching to put Smyrna’s barrel room to use: “I love strong ales that are aged in barrels, particularly imperial stouts in bourbon barrels.” Beer judges agree. StillFire’s Bourbon Black Mask bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout keeps winning medals: bronze at the 2019 US Open Beer Awards, silver at the 2025 New York International Beer Competition, and gold at the 2025 Suwanee Beer Fest.
Farrell rhapsodizes, “Every barrel is unique. The interplay between the malts, yeast character, spirit, and wood result in the most intense yet unique beers I have ever tasted. They can age for years, taking on complex oxidation nuances that literally blow my mind.” So, expect to see many more barrel-aged brews pouring at both locations in coming years.
Rumors of a planned third location have swirled for years — almost since plans for the Smyrna location were announced. But StillFire is mum on the topic. Still, it isn’t hard to imagine what a third location would look like: small city on the upswing, strollable downtown, nearby park or playground, plenty of greenspace for kids and dogs, and no nearby polling places.
Though Farrell isn’t talking about a future beyond Suwanee and Smyrna, he is willing to share some advice for breweries considering expanding to another location.
First, “Stay true to what worked for your first brewery and try to design your second location to complement the first.” Second, “There will always be a struggle to balance taproom, brewery, and cold storage space.” Just do your best. Finally, “Make sure you keep the numbers tight, because there will be cost overruns. Debt took down a lot of breweries in this cycle when revenue dropped.” And if things start going sideways, just ease off the gas and steer into it.
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UP NEXT...
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Owen Ogletree and The Beer Wench travel to Dusseldorf and Dortmund, Germany to report from the best lager and Altbier taverns.
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