With the planned construction of Tormenta FC Stadium, Eagle Creek Brewing Company will expand its beer-making to a new brewpub in the stadium complex, according to owners of both.

Darin Van Tassell, president of South Georgia Tormenta FC, announced this at the March 27 groundbreaking ceremony for the stadium, which will seat about 5,300 fans for soccer matches and up to 14,000 people for concert-style events.

"We will have a craft brewery inside the stadium. …," Van Tassell said. "We will lend Eagle Creek to that piece. We're going to run it, but Eagle Creek had really the audacity to start a craft brewery in Statesboro at a time when others wondered if it would work. That's important to us."

Eagle Creek, he noted, produces Blood of the Ibis, a soccer-season limited edition brew he called "our beer." The name reflects Tormenta's storm-driven ibis logo, and with black currant and hibiscus additives, the beer has a magenta hue.

"We want to continue to help grow that brand," Van Tassell said, referring to Eagle Creek Brewing in general. "It will be right here, in the stadium, open all the time. By the way, on game days it's going to have a cover charge. The cover charge will be the cost of a ticket … because you can watch the game from it, will be the whole thing."

Opened in July 2013, Eagle Creek Brewing shares a picturesque brick building with Sugar Magnolia Bakery and Café on Savannah Avenue in downtown Statesboro. Eagle Creek originally operated as a microbrewery under a previous Georgia law that allowed paid tours in which beer samples were offered, but no direct sales to consumers.

Amid changes in the law, Franklin Dismuke, one of Eagle Creek's founders and now its sole owner, took his business plan in a different direction by relicensing the brewery as a brewpub in late 2016.

Brewpub and cans

Since that change, Eagle Creek serves its own beers and some other alcoholic beverages, as well as nonalcoholic ones, to customers in its taproom. The food menu features entrees such as chicken fingers, shrimp baskets, burgers and various sandwiches, as well as snack-like items ranging from cheese sticks to balsamic honey-glazed Brussels sprouts. 

But the brewery-equipped backroom continues to produce beers and ales in quantity and to can some of them for distribution. Currently the four varieties distributed in cans are Adaptation IPA, which is an India pale ale, Spot Tail Blonde Ale, River Street Praline Brown Ale and Georgia Tea Party Amber. Others varieties are offered periodically in the taproom and in a seasonal rotation.

Both Van Tassell, on March 27, and Dismuke, interviewed by phone Monday, emphasized that the brewery within the stadium complex will not replace the original Eagle Creek brewery.

"It will be a satellite facility," Dismuke said. "Our main facility will still remain downtown."

The way he understands the arrangement so far, Eagle Creek employees will make beer for Tormenta at the stadium facility, which will have its own brewing equipment.

"Granted, there's a lot of details that haven't been decided," Dismuke said. "We're still in that negotiation, but we will be manufacturing the beer for them over there."

Plans he has seen would put Tormenta's own restaurant and the brewpub in a separate building at the corner of the stadium.

"As my understanding is right now, they're going to be operating the restaurant portion of it, and we'll be brewing the beer," Dismuke said.

It will be a chance to expand for a still very small company. Eagle Creek has two full-time and about 11 part-time employees.

The stadium complex will also house Tormenta's team store.

'Wellness kitchen'

During last month's stadium groundbreaking, Van Tassell also talked about the stadium restaurant, which will double as a dining facility for Tormenta's pro and developmental teams.

The restaurant will have nutritionists and dieticians involved in planning meals in a "wellness kitchen" setting that will "cater to how to live well and eat well," for professional and collegiate soccer players and the public, he said.

"The restaurant will not just be open to our players, but it's going to be open to the public all the time," Van Tassell said.

In another local partnership with some details still being worked out, Georgia Southern University's men's and women's soccer teams will also play at the new stadium, and GS coaches have been closely involved in planning it, Van Tassell  said.

"This will never be a stadium that they're going to feel like they're visiting in," he said. "This will be their home too."

The announced goal was to have the stadium built for the start of Tormenta's second USL League One professional season, less than one year from now.  So far, only some site clearing has been done at the former Hackers Golf Park location near The Clubhouse on Old Register Road.

Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.