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Whims Brewing Coming To Atco, Taking Over Atco Brewing Location

Whims Brewing Coming To Atco, Taking Over Atco Brewing Location

Whims Brewing is coming to Atco, New Jersey on the White Horse Pike and will be taking over the location recently vacated by Atco brewing.

The location is just past the Route 73 intersection and next to Rack’s Pub & Grill Atco.

Whims Brewing is owned by well known local homebrewer Dorien Saunders, who has won several South Jersey home brewing competitions.

Dorien is currently remodeling the former brewery and is hoping for a late spring/early Summer opening. Of course a lot of factors have to come together before they get the greenlight to open!

Scroll down for more details and to read about Dorien’s experience and creative look at craft beer brewing.

Whims Brewing and Dorien Saunders

While Whims will occupy the space that was Atco Brewing and Dorien has taken over some of the Atco equipment… he is set on making Whims an all new experience.

Currently he is in the process of remodeling the property.

In a short teaser summary, Dorien shares with 42Freeway his direction;

A big part will be on barrel aging and mixed fermentation beer. Hope to use a lot of NJ and locally grown tristate ingredients including malt, hops, fruit, and herbs

Dorien Saunders, owner of upcoming Whims Brewing in Atco New Jersey

On the Whims Brewing website, Dorien also offers

The focus for Whims Brewing involves the creation of beers utilizing expressive yeast strains and bacteria, exploring different malt varieties, and the use of wood during fermentation and aging.​
We also love creating beers that utilize a variety of fruit, herbs and flowers.

Whims Brewing Website
Whims Brewing most recent Facebook Update

Who is Dorien Saunders?

Up to this point, Dorien Saunders may be one of the most “In the brewing scene, without being in the brewery business” person in South Jersey.

He has been an active member in Brew Jersey homebrew club which is focused in Atlantic County, and can also be found helping out at area beer festivals.

Dorien has been a home brewer for years, and back in 2018 the guys at South Jersey Beer Scene featured him on their podcast after Dorien won two different brewing contests within a month of each other!

Back in 2018 the podcast hosts called Dorien “Royalty”… a very high honor!

The podcast episode is an interesting deep dive into two of Dorien’s winning beers, and also includes representatives from Fermented brewing supply store and Three 3’s Brewing.

Give the podcast a listen… I think the big takeaway from this is Dorien REALLY knows how to brew beer, really knows how to create delicious and interesting beers… and damn we can’t wait to see what he has planned for Whims Brewing in Atco!

Breakfast Cereal Competition

The first competition highlighted on the South Jersey Beer Scene Podcast was a Breakfast Cereal competition which was hosted by three different Jersey shore Brewers associations.

Dorien used Pumpkin Life cereal to make a Cream Ale.

The hosts on the podcast raved about the beer’s flavor “It tasted the most like the cereal” and also the look of the beer.

Dorien’s winning beer was then brewed and sold at Lakewood NJ’s Icarus Brewing!

Football Beer Draft Competition

Fermented Food and Beverage shop is a Hammonton brewing supply shop, and they had another unique idea for a beer competition…

A Fantasy Football style “draft” start to the contest, where participants would in turn pick ingredients from a list.

This is a really interesting and challenging idea in that since participants had no idea what ingredients they would end up with, they really had to figure things out as they went along!

This would make for a great cooking show on the Food Network! Ha!

Dorien ended with ingredients which lead him to a Strawberry Hefeweizen beer!

As part of winning the contest, his beer was then brewed and sold by Hammonton’s Three 3’s Brewing.

South Jersey Beer Scene

South Jersey Beer Scene is THE source for South Jersey brewing news and experiences.

They operate a website, a Facebook page, YouTube Channel and also the podcast.

During the recent covid challenges they took a break from putting out new podcasts, but John of SJBS tells me they just recorded a new episode this past week which they hope to have online soon, and they continue to put out a lot of content on the website, Facebook, and YouTube page.

The Dorien Saunders podcast page is here. The podcasts are available on all of the traditional channels such as Spotify and Apple, so look for episode 26.

South Jersey Beer Scene is THE place for South Jersey Brewing News!

Atco Brewing

While the Whims Brewing news is very exciting, unfortunately Atco Brewing closed their doors.

Back on December 2, 2021 Atco Brewing announced on their Facebook page that they would be closing at the end of that month (December)

On December 28th Atco Brewing shared that the core of their brewing equipment was on it’s way to Texas, where it will find a home at another brewery.

On Thursday December 30th the held their Farewell party, and on the 31st the opened for the last time.

Earlier in 2021 42Freeway featured the new Brotherton Brewing in Atco, and in that post we wrote about Atco Brewing also. Give that post a read here. We also cover Rack’s Atco and the Berlin Brewing Company.

Atco Brewing is now closed, but Whims Brewing is taking over!

Whims Brewing (Open Friday Evenings, Saturday and Sunday)
302 White Horse Pike
Atco NJ

South Jersey Beer Scene