Paper Street Brewing Co. is changing its scenery and its vibe, as Robby Burns, the founder of the five-year-old brewery, puts it.

He decided to close the Richland alehouse at the end of July in favor of bringing the operation closer to home.

A new brewhouse, which will be on the same farmland where the production is, will re-open in March 2019 in Pasco. The new taproom has been a work in progress for several months, requiring a build out and renovation. Most recently, Paper Street installed a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system into the taproom, he said.

The new location is on Burns’ family’s farmland, and the “country-style” taproom will open up into an outdoor area with games and seating facing the fields.

“The vibe in Richland and Kennewick was more of a coffee shop vibe, more low-key,” Burns said. “This will still be low-key but with some fun and games.”

Burns said he plans to have yard games, like Cornhole or Connect 4, on the lawn. The Pasco taproom will not have its own food, and Burns plans to partner with local food trucks and vendors like they did at their first location in downtown Kennewick in 2013. He said he plans to team up with three or four food trucks and cycle them through on weekends. The new taproom will only be open Fridays and Saturdays.

Burns is dealing with the permitting and regulations required to serve beer in a taproom in Franklin County. The process has taken longer than he initially thought.

The brewery announced the decision to close the Richland store on Facebook on July 26 and served its last pints two days later—for now, that is.

Burns said the initial idea was to have both the Richland and Pasco locations open at the same time, but then he found a canning machine and the rent increased at the Richland location.

“We were doing OK over in Richland, but then we kind of went, ‘Do we want to pay rent and everything else,’ because I have other things going on as well, or,  ‘Do we just kind of want to simplify it?’ ” he said.

Burns decided to bring the brewery back to the family property, where he already spends a lot of time brewing and experimenting. He also has a new focus on canning and distributing Paper Street’s brews. Burns hopes to have cans of Paper Street beer on local store shelves this fall.

He plans to can and sell a pale ale, 96 Bones India Pale Ale and Session IPA, which has a lower alcohol by volume content than a normal IPA. He is working with a new water source (beer is mostly water), which is going to change the flavors of the beer slightly.

“We are curious to see how it will change some of our flavor profiles,” he said.

Paper Street is known for experimenting, and Burns does not plan on changing that anytime soon. He said he will have a lot more IPAs on tap going forward as well as continue to experiment with kettle sour beers.

“Beer is supposed to be fun; it’s not wine,” he said. “You’re supposed to enjoy it and have a drink.”

The canning machine will help keep costs down, he said, because he would otherwise have to send his beer out to be canned.

“We don’t have to worry about the middleman or the distributor,” he said.

While canning his own beer will be a bit more labor-intensive, he said it will also enable him to go directly to the consumer.

Previously, Paper Street Brewing Co. focused on hosting events for nonprofits or for the community, like Beer Choir, and Burns says he plans to continue to do so, on perhaps a smaller scale. The brewery donated 5 cents for every pint and growler filled to Feeding America when it was in Richland, and Burns said that partnership will likely continue on tap room sales, not canned beer sales.

The new location is about 10 minutes from the former Richland pub and five minutes north of Road 68 in Pasco.

Burns envisions the new Paper Street to be “a cool place to hang out and have some beers.” He said the transition is about “keeping it simple.”

The brewery will put up signs and post updates about the March re-opening on its social media accounts.