I have posted a bunch of advice over the years about the process of opening and what to focus on during that time. "You need a wheelchair lift for that beer garden": 36k gone. I've never installed a brewery on budget. I still love brewing, and that comes across in the beer, but I've been in this industry long enough to know how hard it is. A crisp French Saison at 4% is a thing of beauty, with nuance and rich flavors. Also, it seems cool and niche, but it just seems like getting drunk is more important than appreciating beer for its styles across the board. That's why most beer sold in the US is 4-6% average. imperials are great but I'm only having half of one, and I want to split it with someone. The beer is more expensive to make, so your margins are shit. Ask me anything you want, but I'll tell you the truth, be ready to hear it.Īlso, ONLY making imperial beer is not a recipe for going big. Canning machines are expensive and difficult to use. Have you thought about packaging? A keg fleet? Tracking kegs? How you'd distribute? Selling everything in cans sounds great, but those sales to bottle shops are difficult, they want one case of whatever, but it has to be new almost all the time. You'd have to be cheaper per keg to have any hope of stealing their draft lines. I'm sure there are local breweries that have been around for 10+ years that have a name in your town. It's increasingly hard to find a foothold even if you have the best beer in town. I'll tell you this: opening anything under a 7bbl brewery will be akin to just buying yourself a low paying job with all the responsibility of being the owner and paying all the bills. Submitted 3 beers to a state competition, won 2 medals, submitted 5 beers to the US Beer open, won 3 medals. I've opened 3 breweries as the Brewmaster (all 15bbl+). Once you start and you’re 200-220K in the hole, you have to either decide whether you sit in the corner rocking or put a helmet on and go hard. plumbing costs were way above expected by 40 odd K Cost of the brewery floor coatings ended up being blown out by some 10-12K and custom drainage requirements blew out by about 6k. I think off the top of my head, that blew things out for 120 odd K. That blew it out by an extra 30K (ish) trades shortage meant we were unable to secure guarantees from tradespeople for completion dates within a 3 month window, so we ended up being forced to bring in a shop fitter and guarantees that they could complete within a reasonable time frame. Effluent management was changed to guarantee we were sufficiently pre-treating waste water that we wouldn’t run into problems with compliance in the next few years at least. Electrician overestimated his mathematical abilities and in the end, we needed huge upgrades so that budget alone blew out by over 40K. We had factors that influenced our kitchen design, especially on health compliance that blew out the kitchen build by over 100K to comply with an impossible health inspector. I found out that the word “fuck” was actually therapeutic. The day China went into their first lockdown, was the day we had confirmed the order for and paid for the brewery (3 hours later, actually). The bills started rolling in for 65K per year rent, inside the next 2 years, bureaucracy happened, COVID-19 Happened and Tradesmen won’t get out of bed for under $90 per hour. Turned out the council town planner didn’t read the guidelines right so after signing the contract and moving in, we found out we had to go to a full development application for change of material use to medium impact industry. We initially sought clarification on the buildings zoning and suitability for a brewery from a local government perspective.
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