Aug 17

Aug 17 Oconee Brewing Company

Voted “best special event venue” in the 2018 Lake Oconee Living Readers’ Choice Awards, Oconee Brewing Company is a quality craft brewery with a stunning 3,600 square foot event space that looks out onto a party patio through an 18-foot high, floor to ceiling glass wall. They host corporate events, weddings and receptions, birthday parties, fundraisers, and more for anyone who wants to rent the space, and they even arrange and host their own events, such as football viewing parties and live concerts.

The seed for Oconee Brewing Company was planted when John and Nathan McGarity heard a friend comment that Greensboro, Georgia would be a great location for a craft brewery. The father and son real estate team immediately saw the potential in the idea. Although still a quaint, small town of a little over 3,000 residents, Greensboro has a thriving day trip tourism industry, being part of the Lake Oconee area and within an easy drive of Atlanta, Athens, Eatonton, Augusta, and Milledgeville. Greensboro already had great restaurants and boutiques, and plenty of lakeside activities, but what they didn’t yet have was a craft brewery.

Oconee Brewing Company stepped in to fill that void, opening on May 6, 2017, after John and Nathan McGarity teamed up with partner Taylor Lamm. Together they transformed a 11,000 square foot, former cotton mill warehouse into a retail production facility with a tasting room that’s open to the public, and a unique event space that works perfectly for any occasion. They also support the local economy by using local resources. The spent grain from Oconee Brewing Company’s beer production is fed to the black Angus cattle of the brewery’s neighbor, Farmer’s Feed and Seed, and the beef from that cattle comes back to local markets. As their website says, that’s “Farm, to table, to frosty glass of Oconee Brewing Company beer!”