What started two years ago as an offshoot at the Cheeseburger Waikiki restaurant to brew and serve beer is about to become a major producer and distributor of local canned craft brews.

Waikiki Brewing Co. is about to begin delivering three varieties of its beer in cans to retailers statewide, up from one variety distributed to a limited number of outlets on Oahu.

“We’re going to be able to go statewide with our new canned beers,” said Joe Lorenzen, the company’s brewmaster.

The two additional canned beers, Aloha Spirit Blonde and Skinny Jeans IPA, should begin to show up on shelves of Hawaii stores, behind bars and in restaurants next week, Lorenzen said. Waikiki Brewing has been canning and distributing its Hana Hou Hefe on Oahu for about a year.

Waikiki Brewing said the increased production was made possible by a new restaurant, pub and brewery that opened last month in Kakaako and will make the company Oahu’s largest producer of craft beer with an expected annual production of a little over 10,000 barrels, or 275,000 cases of beer.

Beverage distributor Johnson Brothers of Hawaii Inc. was a key to broadening distribution.

The Kakaako brewpub is at 831 Queen St. in a building that was once a coffee roasting plant and retail store for Lion Coffee and more recently the Fresh Cafe restaurant. It contains a 20-barrel brewery capable of producing 9,000 barrels of beer a year. By comparison, the brewery inside what used to be a back room for banquets at Cheeseburger Waikiki is a seven-barrel system with an annual volume of 1,600 barrels.

Waikiki Brewing was started in 2015 by Lorenzen, who was a general manager with the company that owns the chain of Cheeseburger restaurants and convinced the company’s owners to open a brewpub at Cheeseburger Waikiki. The brewpub is a separate establishment to the Cheeseburger restaurant and has its own menu, close to 80 seats and nine beers on tap year-round along with a few seasonal or limited-release brews.

Lorenzen said the Kakaako location has about 160 seats and a different menu focused on barbecue. The same nine year-round beers will be offered, but the selection of seasonal and limited-release beers will expand. “We want to let the brewers go to town with their creativity,” he said.