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I need your help to make the following awful plan better:

335bbl/year on a 1/2bbl system brewing 4 x 50L yield batches per day x 4 days per week for two different beer styles (non-lager).

How many fermeters will I need?
How many bright tanks?
How can I make this plan less shitty without spending significantly more money?

Please help me for the love of the beer gods.
Thanks!

Check your business plan, your projected sales and wastage numbers should give you a good idea.

LiverDance wrote:Check your business plan, your projected sales and wastage numbers should give you a good idea.

Maybe I asked the question wrong...

Roughly speaking, beer will spend 2 weeks in a fermenter and 1 week in a bright tank. In order to effectiively ferment and condition 335bbl annually I will need X number of fermenters and Y number of bright tanks. What are the values of X and Y?

I know this is pretty basic stuff but I've been at this all day so I'm just out of brain. Sorry bout that

weisseguy wrote:I need your help to make the following awful plan better:

335bbl/year on a 1/2bbl system brewing 4 x 50L yield batches per day x 4 days per week for two different beer styles (non-lager).

How many fermeters will I need?
How many bright tanks?
How can I make this plan less shitty without spending significantly more money?

Please help me for the love of the beer gods.
Thanks!

You sir are mad. That's 700 batches per year. 3.36 per day brewing 4 day brew cycle.
14 Fermenters required per week.
2 week rotation.
= 28 fermenters.
Brite tanks if you are on top of everything you'd probably need 4-8 to keep up with it all.

Being realistic brewing that much per week isn't practical.

Keith wrote:

weisseguy wrote:I need your help to make the following awful plan better:

335bbl/year on a 1/2bbl system brewing 4 x 50L yield batches per day x 4 days per week for two different beer styles (non-lager).

How many fermeters will I need?
How many bright tanks?
How can I make this plan less shitty without spending significantly more money?

Please help me for the love of the beer gods.
Thanks!

You sir are mad. That's 700 batches per year. 3.36 per day brewing 4 day brew cycle.
14 Fermenters required per week.
2 week rotation.
= 28 fermenters.
Brite tanks if you are on top of everything you'd probably need 4-8 to keep up with it all.

Being realistic brewing that much per week isn't practical.

I was thinking that might be the case...I just needed to hear it from someone else.

Clearly I need a bigger kettle/mashtun so I can brew less often. Either that, or pay myself less Hahahaha!!!!

How do these 1/2 bbl brewhouses even exist/survive?

weisseguy wrote: I was thinking that might be the case...I just needed to hear it from someone else.

Clearly I need a bigger kettle/mashtun so I can brew less often. Either that, or pay myself less Hahahaha!!!!

How do these 1/2 bbl brewhouses even exist/survive?

Part time brewery, full time real job.

Smallest one would\should go would be 4-5 barrels, but even then you will be a slave to the brewery and not able to keep up with supply.
1/2-1 barrel would be ideal for testing new recipes.
Also if you have no brewing experience, good chance you're going to have a rough go in the beginning.

They don't, some do it for enjoyment with no profit and most others plan to expand asap.

To be blunt, your plan doesn't make any sense. You can scale up in volume to 50 gallon kettles, etc., for only a modest additional investment. (That's about as large as you can go with cheap off the shelves, before you have to go frankenbrew or buy professional gear.) Dave brings them in. At very least you need to do that.

Even then though, it probably doesn't make any sense at that scale (1 bbl net). I strongly encourage you to go read the many threads on nano start ups over at Probrewer.com to get an idea of the issues with production and costs, and to see what sort of models are feasible in your market. Remember that a good chunk of your overhead is going to be fixed or very close to fixed (accountant, NSLC permit, legal stuff, your wage, various layers of insurance, rent, etc.) and will be very, very hard to pay off on the income from an operation like you propose.

To be completely frank, opening any business--and a food service business 1000X that!--is a huge risky step, and it requires detailed and serious research before you even consider doing it. Before you go any further, you should spend a bunch of time on Probrewer, visit as many nanos as you can with a prepared list of informed questions, draft up a real business plan that includes some worse case scenario number crunching, and think seriously about whether you really want to get into a job that is going to require a lot of planning, a lot of brutal and unfun work, and very likely cost you your shirt at the end of the day.

Again to be blunt, if you're at the stage where you're throwing out random questions about very basic logistics (you really should know about scaling, basic equipment, etc. at this point) to a group of beer amateurs, you might want to step back and ask yourself whether you've really thought this through or have a clear idea of where you want to go or how you would go about getting there.

Note: All of the above is written with genuine kindness and respect... and a bucketload of caution!

Jason

This thread is a good place to start:
http://discussions.probrewer.com/showth ... ve-Learned

What Jason and Keith said. If you go the route that you propose, you will burn out within a year and hate brewing for a long time thereafter.
If beer is your passion, why aim to destroy it?
A good book to read is Brewing Up a Buisness by Sam Calagione. He started the way you describe, and wrote about how stupid and hard it was.
http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Up-Busine ... a+business" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also if you have some beer you want some input on, I would recommend submitting your entries to the 2016 Brewnosers comp as you are still considered a Amateur brewer.

I meant to thank all of you for your input way before now. THANK YOU!


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Solid and real advice guys...

elreplica wrote:Solid and real advice guys...

Yes! This helped me avoid making a lot of awful mistakes. I’ll still probably make stupid mistakes though


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So what’s the verdict. Did you change your plan or decide not to do it?



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Keith wrote: ↑

Tue May 03, 2016 4:03 pm

weisseguy wrote: I was thinking that might be the case...I just needed to hear it from someone else.

Clearly I need a bigger kettle/mashtun so I can brew less often. Either that, or pay myself less Hahahaha!!!!

How do these 1/2 bbl brewhouses even exist/survive?

Part time brewery, full time real job.

Smallest one would\should go would be 4-5 barrels, but even then you will be a slave to the brewery and not able to keep up with supply.
1/2-1 barrel would be ideal for testing new recipes.
Also if you have no brewing experience, good chance you're going to have a rough go in the beginning.

Hey Keith,

How's that 4 to 5 barrel system working out for you, lol

oceanic_brew wrote:So what’s the verdict. Did you change your plan or decide not to do it?

Still in the planning phase at this point. Locations have changed since this thread was started and I’ve decided to abandon (initially) the idea of offering food too and just focus on making great beers! But it’s still a dream of mine to start a craft brewery here on Cape Breton Island!

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Haha. Slave to the brewery and work full time. Hobby brewery and still enjoying it 7 months in. Wish I had a quarter mil. Lol

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Keith wrote:Haha. Slave to the brewery and work full time. Hobby brewery and still enjoying it 7 months in. Wish I had a quarter mil. Lol

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I’m so jealous!


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Careful what you “weisse” for...

My advice is that you can buy a 5bbl brewhouse from Colorado brewing systems for under 20k USD. It's a little sketchy but it seems to work ok

MitchK wrote:My advice is that you can buy a 5bbl brewhouse from Colorado brewing systems for under 20k USD. It's a little sketchy but it seems to work ok

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Pm'd.