Terrapin Beer Company is stepping up to the plate.
The Athens, Georgia-based brewery is opening a taproom and "brew lab" adjacent to SunTrust Park, the new home of Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves, which will open next season.
"To have the Braves behind us with their branding and their fan base, I'm very excited," said Brian "Spike" Buckowski, Terrapin's co-founder and vice president of brewing.
"I mean how many hundreds of thousands of people are going to be walking through those gates every year and will be looking at the Terrapin logo? It's a huge opportunity," he continued.
The Terrapin Taproom will be a restaurant operated by stadium concessionaire Delaware North, featuring Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q and serving a rotating tap list of well-known Terrapin brews such as Hopsecutioner, HI-5, RecreationAle and Rye Pale Ale.
Next to the taproom will be the ATL Brew Lab, which will have a five-barrel system that will allow Terrapin brewers to flex their creative muscles by creating small batches of beer that will only be available at the ballpark, including "baseball-themed brews" where appropriate.
"What really gets my juices flowing from a creative standpoint is brewing for the brewlab," he said. "Where we're going to shine is doing one-off beers, like if it's like a player's birthday or you know how baseball stadiums have different nights and themes and things like that, we'll be able to act quickly to create a lot of different recipes at the brewlab that we might not have tried."
Both the Terrapin Taproom and the ATL Brew Lab will be located at the right field gate at Sun Trust Park and stay open year-round.
The deal is part of a multiyear partnership between the Atlanta Braves and MillerCoors, whose Tenth and Blake craft division purchased a full ownership in Terrapin in July after owning a minority stake since 2012. Terrapin produced 57,000 barrels of beer last year, up nearly 25 percent from 2014.
MillerCoors is no stranger to the brewery connected to a baseball stadium concept.
Another Tenth and Blake brand, Blue Moon Brewing Company, has operated The Sandlot Brewery inside Denver's Coors Field since 1995.
"Just to have that in our back pocket, where you can pick up the phone and say 'hey how do you handle this or that' will be a great experience for us to be able to pick their brain for sure," said Buckowski. "So we're going to learn from them and I hope that they'll learn from us as well."