Fred Matt: We're here to stay

Good news was reported from Utica yesterday: "We're alive, we're going to be well, and we're here to stay," said Matt Brewing's Vice-President Fred Matt.

As reported at the Syracuse Post-Standard, recovery is moving forward at the upstate New York brewery, since fire gutted its canning plant on 29 May.

The bottling line - which cranks out the Saranac beers - survived, but it's taken nearly a month of cleanup and restoration to get it in shape. The brewing area was not affected.

Meanwhile, the brewery's been kegging some Saranac, but the tanks are still full, waiting for bottling to resume.

Some Saranac flavors, such as the best-selling Pale Ale and the increasingly popular Pomegranate Wheat, may temporarily disappear from some store shelves. But Matt expects production to get back on schedule within a few weeks of the bottling line's restart.