Orono Brewing Company is ready to grow.
When the company first opened in what was previously a concrete factory in Orono in 2014, brewmaster Asa Marsh-Sachs said the building “felt huge” despite it being unkempt, with holes in the roof and trees growing inside.
It took months to clean and make room for a fermenter, a specialized metal container where alcoholic drinks are fermented.
Now, the building holds 21 fermenters, plus a canning machine, a tasting room and a full kitchen that take up every square foot of the building. A hole has already been cut in one wall to fit more equipment in, and the only way something else could fit is if “something came to me in the middle of the night,” Marsh-Sachs said.
But rather than banking on a premonition, co-owners Marsh-Sachs, Mark Horton, and Abe and Heather Furth, are preparing to expand.
Orono Brewing Company is one of the most successful breweries to emerge from the state’s beer craze. After more than a decade of steady growth, the company took a first step this month to expand its footprint in Orono and put itself on a path to become one of the largest brewers in the country.
Since buying the property that holds its flagship location off Main Street, the brewery’s owners have slowly purchased plots of surrounding land. The land was originally zoned for housing and wasn’t bought with an expansion in mind.
The Orono Planning Board approved the redistricting of four lots surrounding the brewery, three of which are owned by Orono Brewing Company, in a meeting Wednesday. The rezoning, which changed the lots from residential to commercial, allows the company to propose expansions to the board in coming years.
Although specific plans and dates have not been presented to the planning board, the owners already have ideas.
The owners want to avoid building a new brewery without knowing if they could recoup the costs. Instead, they are looking to add on to the existing structure by building a new walk-in cooler and using the current cooler space to add more fermenters, Abe Furth said. There are also plans to add a storage shed on the property, he said.
“That’s the beauty of having this space and being able to expand incrementally and not shoot the moon,” Furth said.
That vision is planned to come to fruition in the coming years, but the owners won’t say when.
That’s partly because the brewery has been so successful that it doesn’t need to rush.
Orono Brewing Company opened in a “tiny building” in 2014 and has grown every year since, Furth said. Growth has been steady, and the brewery has nearly doubled the amount of beer it brewed in the last five years alone.
The owners aren’t anticipating large growth in a single year and know they can fit in their home for now, he said.
“We’re OK this year, but we know if we grow by 10% next year we’re in trouble,” Furth said.
Orono Brewing Company brewed 10,031 barrels in 2025 and is predicted to brew around 13,000 this year, Furth said. When accounting for seltzers, the company brewed roughly 15,500 barrels last year.
By tracking sales and production, Furth knows that the brewery sells 95% of its beer in Maine and is one of the largest breweries in the state based on production.
The owners have set a goal to brew 15,000 barrels, or roughly 210,000 cases of beer, in the near future. Reaching 15,000 barrels would make Orono Brewing Company one of the roughly 150 largest breweries in the country.
To achieve that goal, the brewery will have to add more space.
“We can only fit so many fermenters in this building,” Furth said.
But the brewery knows it isn’t reasonable to make large expansions in a single year. Heather Furth, who is the chief financial officer for the company, is “good at making sure ego doesn’t get ahead of us,” Abe Furth said, and part of that is staying within the brewery’s means.
Orono Brewing Company’s appeal is large in Maine, Furth said. University of Maine students and graduates know the brand from its Orono location, other buyers see it at Hannaford and social media has expanded it further, Furth said.
But that doesn’t mean the brewery should expand to more locations or more states, Furth said.
“Orono is such a special place,” Furth said.