Peter Egelston

HAMPTON -- Smuttynose Brewery President Peter Egelston had a celebratory beer Wednesday that he shared with the world on Facebook.

The toast was not in honor of a new beer but rather to announce that all the financing for the construction of the new state-of-the-art brewery on Towle Farm Road is now 100 percent in place.

"So we now have all the funding we need to build our new brewery at Towle Farm in Hampton," Egelston said in the Facebook video post.

Egelston said Friday he signed off on seven different loans for the project to relocate his brewery from Portsmouth to Hampton with the bank, the Small Business Administration and from two economic development corporations.

On Wednesday, the final piece of financing, a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant, was approved unanimously by the Executive Council.

The N.H. Community Development Finance Authority previously approved the federal grant award to Rockingham County on behalf of the Coastal Economic Development Corporation. The CEDC intends to loan the capital to the Smuttynose Brewing Co., which will pay the money back to the organization with interest.

The funding will be used to help purchase necessary equipment, including three new brew tanks, for the new facility.

While work has already begun on the project, Egelston said now they can pay for it.

"And that's great news," he said.

Egelston said the goal is to move into the new facility at some point in late 2013.

The new location will feature a 42,000-square-foot production facility for on-site brewing and bottling, as well as a 95-seat restaurant.

The project includes many conservation measures, including preserving and repurposing two historic buildings on the property, a high-efficiency waste treatment system, and other energy efficiency measures. The new building is in line for gold certification in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

The company purchased the land in 2008, but the U.S. financial meltdown that year made securing loans for the project difficult.

Egelston decided to move the brewery to Hampton to expand its operations, after previous bids to relocate the brewery to sites in both Portsmouth and Newmarket did not work out.