Exclusive: Cultured South opening East Point brewery and HQ

Cultured South, the Atlanta-based kombucha and fermented-goods powerhouse based on the BeltLine’s Westside Trail is opening a brewery in East Point.

Driving the news: Last week, Melanie Wade Styles, Cultured South's founder and CEO, purchased a 21,000 square-foot early 20th century manufacturing complex near downtown East Point. Once open, the facility will be the city’s first brewery.

Details: Called Atlanta Utility Works by Cultured South, the new headquarters will include a small urban farm to grow culinary herbs for kombucha brews and cabbage, carrots and green onions to ferment. Styles also plans to have some small goats and chickens for a hobby farm.

• After the three to four month buildout of the production space, Styles plans to build a taproom similar to the Westside Trail location. The company will also apply for an alcohol license to serve local beer, wine and cocktails.
• Flashback: The property was once the Atlanta Utility Works where crews built agricultural machinery like crop dusting equipment, hulling machines and cottonseed oil extractors.

Don’t panic: Cultured South will keep the popular Beltline taproom and its brewery space for oak-aged, seasonal and experimental fermented batches.

This is our forever home. We’re not skimping in terms of building it out. I live in East Point. For me it’s about investing in the community and adjacent communities.

Backstory: Styles started brewing kombucha in college using her grandmother Golda’s recipe (the kombucha brand was named in her honor).

• After moving into the Lee and White space five years ago — a 6,000 square-foot facility and taproom that Styles thought the company would never outgrow — she started creating other fermented products, plus CBD-infused kombuchas.

Today, Cultured South kombucha can be found as far west as Colorado and north up to New Jersey and New York.