It wasn’t that long ago when a beer lover, if she wanted to get a good, local craft beer, would have to go to the brewery where it was made and sold. The locally brewed beers weren’t available in your local Kroger or Walmart.

But now, in just the span of a few years, that has changed. Craft beer drinkers can go to the corner gas station and pick up a six-pack of the same beer that is served at the brewery.

That’s thanks to the craft beer boom that’s going on nationwide, including in Central Kentucky, causing locally breweries to expand their facilities and their labor force.

Lexington’s Country Boy Brewing recently built a new facility in Georgetown just for its canning. The business founded in 2012 has plans to eventually produce 25,000 barrels of beer annually. To compare, Country Boy brewed 500 barrels its first year, 1,800 barrels its second, 5,000 in 2014.

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Country Boy Brewing’s new production facility in Georgetown. Matt Goins

Jeff Beagle, one of the founders and operations manager of Country Boy Brewing, said the brewery’s increased production has been great for business, especially its canned products such as Shotgun Wedding, Cougar Bait, Cliff Jumper and Classic Hard Cider.

“It’s been pretty amazing so far,” Beagle said of the canned products. “(People) still come to the taproom, grab a beer, or a six-pack to take home with them.”

Lexington’s West Sixth Brewing cans its beer at its facility at 501 West Sixth Street. When it began production in 2012, West Sixth produced about 20,000 cans of beer a month, said Ben Self, one of the founders of the company. All of it was the West Sixth India Pale Ale, the flagship beer for the company. The beers were available only in Lexington at Kroger, Speedway and Liquor Barns.

Now the brewery plans to produce 2.2 million cans by the end of this year or about 183,333 cans a month. The brewery also intends to add two or three 80-barrel fermenters early next year.

“We definitely grew faster than we anticipated,” Self said. “We were definitely surprised and pleased about how thirsty Kentucky was for more of a whole craft beer.”

The explosion of local canned and bottled beer also brings money and jobs into the state, according to a 2017 study commissioned by the Beer Institute and National Beer Wholesalers Association.

The beer industry provided nearly 9,000 direct Kentucky jobs, which included brewing, wholesaling and retailing. When it comes to Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District, which includes Lexington and surrounding counties, the study reports beer brings 2,075 jobs to the area.