Country Boy Brewing adds distillery in Sadieville, eyes 2026 opening

Country Boy Brewing has added a distillery in Sadieville, converting a 1,300-square-foot space at 325 Cincinnati Road that once housed Hi-View/Hi-Vew Meats & Groceries. Country Boy Distilling is slated to open in fall 2026 with vodka, gin and apple brandy, plus tours, a tasting room and a small bar pouring cocktails and Country Boy beer.

The move gives the brewery a new lane beyond beer at a time when many craft brands are looking for steadier revenue and a broader drink mix. Country Boy says the distilling project has been two years in the making, and the scale of the build points to a careful first step rather than a wholesale leap into a huge spirits program. The company has not said how much it plans to produce, whether it will start laying down barrels, or whether bourbon will eventually join the lineup.

That restraint still sits inside a bigger Kentucky spirits story. The Kentucky Distillers’ Association says bourbon accounts for about $9 billion in economic impact statewide, and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail has grown from seven distilleries when it launched in 1999 to more than 60 destinations. One trade report put trail traffic at 2.7 million visitors last year and pegged the broader industry at $10.6 billion annually for Kentucky’s economy. Country Boy wants a place in that ecosystem someday, with an eventual goal of joining both the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.

Pete Weiss, Country Boy’s marketing director, said the tasting room concept is aimed at both locals and tourists. Daniel “DH” Harrison, one of Country Boy Brewing’s founders, said the Sadieville site carries personal weight because he grew up stopping there every week. That kind of neighborhood connection matters in a market where breweries increasingly lean on spirit sales, tours and bar traffic to keep the lights on when beer alone gets harder to grow.

Country Boy Brewing was founded in 2012 by four native Kentuckians and expanded its Georgetown brewhouse in 2017. The company says that site is the largest production brewery in the state, a scale that makes the new Sadieville distillery look less like a side project than a measured diversification play. In Scott County, where the project is being described as the first production distillery since Prohibition was repealed, a former butcher shop is set to become Country Boy’s first serious spirits foothold.