LUDLOW – On a snowy evening before Thanksgiving in 2014, a small brewery opened in an old mill building on the banks of the Chicopee River.

Just a couple of years later, that brewery is one of the most successful and recognizable names in the local craft beer scene.

As Iron Duke Brewing Company approaches its second anniversary, it does so as a company that has experienced tremendous growth during the past 12 months.

“It’s been a crazy year,” Iron Duke’s Mike Marcoux said.

In a year’s time, Marcoux explained, the brewery located in Stockhouse 122 of the Ludlow Mills more than doubled its account portfolio. Starting its second year with approximately 25 bars and restaurants pouring their beer, Iron Duke is now on the tap lists for 60 local establishments. In addition to that, the company introduced 750 mL bottles for the first time, adding 12 to 15 package stores to the list of establishments at which you can find their beer.

With the growth of the brand has come growth of the company as well.

From a manpower standpoint, Marcoux and Master Brewer Nick Morin recently welcomed two new full-time employees – Chris Liles and Jeff Green.

Liles was given the position of assistant brewer, offering Morin much-needed support in production.

“He helps Nick on brew days, he does all our packaging and a lot of stuff that is just so time consuming,” Marcoux explained. “For the first year, Nick was doing all of that in addition to the administrative stuff and the recipe stuff, so it’s good to have a second set of hands for him full-time on the brewing end.”

Green has become a jack-of-all-trades for the company, primarily assisting Marcoux with sales and distribution, but also performing tasks such as merchandise tracking and labeling.

“Having Jeff who can do so much really frees me up to do more selling,” Marcoux said. “We have a lot more accounts, which is great, but with that comes a little bit more of a time commitment, just even from a relationship-building standpoint, so having the extra support is a big help.”

From a physical perspective, the brewing facility itself has also undergone some changes, including the addition of two new working fermenting tanks. Those tanks, among the original pieces of equipment purchased by Morin and Marcoux, were originally dairy equipment that was remodeled as fermenters.

“Originally we went with the three brewery fermenters because it was an easy hook-up and those were meant to brew beer,” Marcoux said. “These ones, Nick, or MacGyver as I like to call him, had to do some modifications to make them work.”

The extra effort was worth it, however, as it not only expanded capacity, but opened up new creative avenues.

“It allows us a lot of flexibility and lets us do some cool stuff, like the coolship IPA we released recently, for example,” Marcoux said. “The fact that we’re able to have a flat vessel that we can temperature control and do open fermentation was great. We’ve been doing so much experimenting over the past year.”

As the brewery has grown and continued to experiment, it has managed to find a winning formula for mixing old favorites with new flavors.

“People are always asking us what’s new and what’s different, so we’re always trying to keep up and do many new and different things,” he said, “Our goal was to do at least one new beer a quarter, but we’ve been lucky enough, especially after adding Chris, to be able to add at least two a quarter. We added at least six to eight new beers this year.”

It’s an approach that has not only been successful in the Iron Duke taproom, but at the bars and restaurants the brewery serves as well.

“We’re pretty open with people right off the bat. We have our four or five staples that really got us on the map – Dead Nuts and Baby Maker at the core, then to a lesser extent The Common, Stud Finder and Sinker – and then we rotate and switch,” Marcoux said.

“What we’ve noticed almost right off the bat when we’d see an account the first thing they ask is, ‘What do you have new this week?’ It doesn’t exactly work like that, but it’s clear that people want change and they’re receptive to it. Our accounts have been very open. We love being able to experiment and share it with them and teach them about the beer and telling the story of how we got this beer,” he added.

Moving forward, Marcoux said the brewery intends to add another 30-barrel fermenter to further increase capacity. He also indicated there would be a push to become even more accessible through expanded taproom hours and more events outside of the brewery, such as tastings and beer dinners.

“We’re just looking to keep on growing,” he said.

To commemorate the brewery’s second year, it will release its second in its series of annual celebration beers. Called “104,” this year’s offering is a barley lager that figures to be around 10 percent alcohol by volume.

“It’s a big beer,” Marcoux said.

In addition to 104, which will be released on Nov. 17 at a special Thursday opening at the brewery, a second beer with connections to the first will be released shortly thereafter.

After we finished mashing in and transferring [104], we second filled it and did a second running beer, so we’ll have a second running IPA that will come in somewhere around 4.5 and 5 percent [alcohol by volume] that will be out this month as well for our anniversary,” Marcoux explained.

As part of the anniversary festivities, Iron Duke will host a pair of beer dinners – Nov. 14 at MeatBall Kitchen in Wilbraham and Dec. 4 at Bottega Cucina in West Springfield. The team also has plans for in-house celebrations and the brewery will again be open the night before Thanksgiving.

For more information visit http://irondukebrewing.com, or follow them on Facebook (www.facebook.com/irondukebeer), Twitter or Instagram (@irondukebrewing).