About 400 cases a month will be bottled for the initial distribution throughout Oregon, parts of Northern California and as far north as Seattle.

At present, the Klamath Falls-based brewery offers eight micro-brews and several seasonal beers on tap and in 22-ounce bottles.

The brewery has seen consumers shifting to the six packs and not buying as many of the 22-ounce bottles, so the staff decided to make the move.

“For about six or seven years, we’ve had beers available in the 22-ounce bottles,” said brew master Corey Zschoche. “As we see consumers shifting to the six pack, the Vanilla Porter is an obvious choice, our No. 1 selling beer.

“Our Basin Blonde ale, which we had available in the 22s but don’t any more…we wanted to get that back out there in our six-pack package,” Zschoche said. “It’s a light beer, something a guy could sit down and drink two or three.”

The firm will start bottling the brews starting May 3. It distributes in Medford, Ashland, Eugene, Bend, the Portland area and into Washington around the Vancouver areas. It will soon test the waters in Seattle.

It has a distributor in Weed, Calif., to reach into that area and is bringing on a new sales person to expand that market along the Interstate-5 corridor. Six pack will cost about $11 to $12; the 22-ounce bottles cost $4 to 4.50. The expansion will mean a couple of extra batches of the micro-brews will be needed each month.

“This opens up a different market,” manager Jerry Rosterrolla said. “As you go down the beer aisle in a grocery store, you have the usual Budweiser, Coors, Miller beers, and then the imports and then the micro-section.

“The micro section is expanding on the six-packs. Stores are cutting back on the domestics and imports, and expanding for the micro-brews in six packs. So there’s the game for growth right there.

“The 22s are still doing well,” Rosterolla said. “But if you open one and don’t drink it all, it will eventually go flat. The six packs give consumers a choice and have fresh beer left over.”

The biggest challenge for the local brewery was, in order to make it competitive, it had to buy a large quantity of bottles. It had to factor into the investment as knowing what the sales may be.

Green Bottling of Portland will set up a mobile operation at the restaurant to do the initial bottling. Eventually, as the product expands, the brewery may purchase its own equipment to be housed in the building slated for expansion.

The footprint of the brewery is about 8,200 square feet. Come this summer, plans are to expand its seating and its operations north of the current location and include an additional 11,000 square feet.

“We hope to begin renovating that building in about 45 to 6o days,” said Rob Jellesed, operations manager.

The change has economic benefits for the basin as well. Aside from increase shipping traffic, the restaurant is also seeing an increase of people who tour various micro-breweries as part of their vacation.

“So, putting out the name of Klamath Basin Brewery along the I-5 corridor will help bring people to the basin,” Rosterolla said.