West Sixth Brewing to tap Louisville market

Lexington craft brewery West Sixth Brewing will expand into the Louisville market starting Friday.

Its West Sixth IPA beer will be served on draft at the Louisville Area Business Alliance Brewfest, 4 to 10 p.m. Friday at Louisville's Slugger Field. The festival is a celebration of local independent brewers and other locally-owned businesses.

After the brewfest, a launch party will introduce the West Sixth IPA in cans at Nachbar in Louisville's Germantown neighborhood.

A distribution plan calls for the beer to be available at stores and restaurants in metropolitan Louisville in the next few months, said Ben Self, one of the owners of West Sixth Brewing.

The beer will be distributed by River City Distributing.

West Sixth IPA is the first locally produced beer to be distributed in a can. Joe Kuosman, an owner of West Sixth, said he and his business partners decided on cans, rather than bottles, because cans are "better for the beer, better for the planet, better on the go."

Kuosman said cans are environmentally friendly because they weigh less than glass, are easier to recycle and require less packaging. He said 75 percent of glass bottles end up in landfills; 57 percent of aluminum cans are recycled.

West Sixth brewer Robin Sither said the brewery wanted to take part in the brewfest because the Alliance "really stands for all of the things we believe in as a brewery. Nachbar is a perfect place to launch a locally produced beer in cans."

This story was originally published June 20, 2012 at 2:07 PM with the headline "West Sixth Brewing to tap Louisville market."