Toxic Brew gets green light to build brewery and tasting room along Great Miami River

It's been a long time coming, but Toxic Brew Company founder Shane Juhl believes it will be worth the wait.

More than two years after the project was first announced, Juhl and his brewery have overcome a potentially deal-killing regulatory obstacle and are now moving ahead with plans to build a production brewery and tap room along the Great Miami River north of downtown Dayton.

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The Dayton Environmental Advisory Board, which helps the city protect water quality of the Dayton’s rivers and reviews development proposals that could impact the city’s well fields, voted last week to approve Toxic Brew’s revised plans, according to both Juhl and Kathy Arnett, a member of the environmental advisory board.

The vote was unanimous, Arnett confirmed.

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While there are still other regulatory approvals Juhl must navigate before construction can begin, the environmental advisory board’s approval was a crucial step that will allow the brewery owner to move ahead with the project.

“We’ll start the process early next year, and hope to break ground next summer,” Juhl told this news outlet.

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The new production brewery will increase Toxic Brew’s brewing capacity fourfold. Its tap room will feature a view of the Great Miami River, and could host special events such as weddings and occasional festivals, Juhl said.

The 4.3-acre tract that Juhl purchased in 2016 is located at the end of Janney Road north of Stanley Avenue and west of Troy Street on the east side of the Great Miami River. The view of the west riverbank includes a railroad trestle and the Great Miami River bike/recreation trail.

Toxic Brew’s current brewery and tap room at 431 E. Fifth St. in Dayton’s Oregon Historic District will remain open, and ultimately will shift its focus to brewing exclusively sour and farmhouse-style ales, Juhl said.

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Plans for the new brewery will include secondary containment measures to guard against spills that could affect the river or well fields and will incorporate other safety and handling measures, Juhl said.

The Toxic Brew project represents yet another example of a remarkable craft-brewing renaissance that has occurred throughout the Dayton area over the last seven years. More than a dozen breweries have opened in the Miami Valley, which had zero local craft breweries at the beginning of this decade.

>> PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Toxic Brew Company to build production brewery along Great Miami River (August 2016)

Despite naysayers who predicted at the time that the Miami Valley couldn’t support that many breweries, none of the first wave of local breweries has closed, and nearly all have expanded, most of them significantly.

Dayton Beer Company and Lock 27 are among those local breweries that have built much larger facilities than their original locations, and Eudora brewery in Kettering is in the process of doing the same. Yellow Springs Brewery and Warped Wing Brewing Co., among others, purchased or leased space to help accommodate canning, bottling and retail sales.

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And the front end of a second wave of new breweries has followed those initial brewery openings, including Branch & Bone (Dayton), Heavier than Air (Washington Twp.), Devil Wind (Xenia), FigLeaf (Middletown) and Mother Stewart’s (Springfield) breweries. More are on the way, including Alematic Artisan Ales in Huber Heights and Moeller Brew Barn in Troy.

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