Help me build my dream Brewery!

Hey guys,

My boss, who's kind of an entrepreneur, wants me to help build a startup brewery in the basement of the building our office is in. Basically, he owns the whole building and there are 3 stories plus a basement. The first floor is a restaurant, the second floor is an event center, and the third are our offices (a web development company). The basement used to be at ground level in the 1800's when Minneapolis had waterways running through it for trade routes, so it has some cool history.

Basically, he wants to build a complete electric HERMS system (Kal's), with a few conical fermenters, refrigeration and freezers, cabinets, counters, etc. Right now the basement is split into a few big open rooms with drains all over. After a year or so of brewing and refining recipes, we'll decide if it's profitable to go pro and sell the beer out of the restaurant on the first floor. For now, this will just be a pimped out home brewery. It will start as a 10 gallon brewery, and we'll scale up as needed.

I'm looking for advice and ideas for laying out the brewing room. What works for you guys? Do we need counters next to the brew station? What kind of storage is needed? What are some of the ideas you love, or wish you had? We are starting from scratch, so we're open to anything!

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

You pretty much are living what I have dreamed of since my first brew experience! Keep us posted

I'll post some photos of the space tomorrow. I'm excited to hear what others have come up with!

One really important thing to consider is if he might go pro at some point he should design the system and space to accommodate the necessary safety and health requirements that the brewery would need if it needed to pass licensing. It would be really sad to see all that time and money go into the system and then have to tear it all out to put some drains in the floor.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

One really important thing to consider is if he might go pro at some point he should design the system and space to accommodate the necessary safety and health requirements that the brewery would need if it needed to pass licensing. It would be really sad to see all that time and money go into the system and then have to tear it all out to put some drains in the floor.

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Is there a place these requirements are listed or discussed? I don't want to go through the hassle of working with all the government agencies right now, but it would be helpful to start off on the right foot.

Well it just depends on how much money you want to drop and how much work you want to do yourself. The only problem with starting so small is that WHEN you decide to make it commercial a lot of your hard work/equipment will have to be replaced for bigger, better equipment.

I would start here. That is, if my boss would agree to drop that kind of coin.

prrriiide said:

I would start here. That is, if my boss would agree to drop that kind of coin.

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Looks like some sweet systems, but we're sticking with electric for the foreseeable future.

So far, we've spent about $10,000 on a Kal's Clone e-Herms setup, with a couple 14.5 gallon Blichmann conicals, milling station, and stainless brew stand.

We're installing a couple 30A/240v outlets in the coming weeks, and planning ventilation as soon as we figure out where to put the brew rig.

Wow.

This may be a helpful presentation for layout:
http://www.ahaconference.org/wp-con...Setting_Up_Your_Own_Homebrewery-Blichmann.pdf

An update on the brewery build,

We have a decent idea of the layout, I'm attaching some pics of the basement as it is now. Obviously we're in for some work.

We're planning out the drains, electrical, ventilation, and water lines soon. We still have a few weeks until our parts arrive, so hopefully we'll have it all done by then. The back and right-side walls are exterior, so I think we'll be venting out there. This is directly below where the kitchen for the restaurant is.

Here is the full room. We're going to frame out a wall for the brewing station with frosted glass windows so you can see through. We'll use the rest of the room for entertainment/relaxing. You can kind of see the glass panels up against the far back wall.


This is where the water lines drain. We're thinking of putting a valve into one of the lines and installing a stainless sink/faucet. We'll run it to the drain below.


This is one of the exterior walls. You can see where the windows were in the 1800's. As I mentioned before, this basement used to be at ground level when there were waterways connecting trade routes. Pretty cool, IMO.


This is one of the walk-in coolers in use now. We'll be getting another one for storing kegs and bottles. Maybe a smaller one for fermenting in.


I'm standing right about where the wall will be framed in. This should give us plenty of room for storage, brewing, fermenting, etc. The room is about 25 feet wide, the room will be around 25x40.



Let me know what you guys think! Hoping to get it all cleaned out in the next week! 'Til then...

Cheers!

Wow. Amazing.

More photos:

This is what we'll be brewing on. We're ordering 2 of these stainless tables. One for a brew stand, the other for prep.


A closer view of the glass panels. These were once used as flooring for our office hallway. We still have a glass floor, but we replaced the old panels. Hoping this looks as good as planned in the wall we're framing.

Those walls are beautiful! What restaurant are you talking about? may have to stop by sometime to check it out.

That sounds awesome...I might have to come check out the restaurant as well! Where is this located?

Midnigh7 said:

That sounds awesome...I might have to come check out the restaurant as well! Where is this located?

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It's a secret...

Once we're up and running, we'll let everyone know. Can't get you too excited yet, right now it's just a bunch of brick walls!

saweet. subscribed.

An important thing to do sooner rather than later is make sure that your city is okay with you opening a brewery in a basement. Zoning safety codes etc....

Good luck!!!

Subscribed - keep workin hard!

Neat.

I'm involved with a nano brewery that opened last month. 30G system. Get that paper work going as it takes forever. Ventilation? How is the water. CaN you get rid of the spent grains? How many brews on tap and you'll need a large Co2 tank and a cooling area for your kegs.

It's certainly doable but the dang paper work . . . .we had ventilation issues. There is a lot of steam you know.

Grinder12000 said:

I'm involved with a nano brewery that opened last month. 30G system. Get that paper work going as it takes forever. Ventilation? How is the water. CaN you get rid of the spent grains? How many brews on tap and you'll need a large Co2 tank and a cooling area for your kegs.

It's certainly doable but the dang paper work . . . .we had ventilation issues. There is a lot of steam you know.

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Thanks for the tips! Right now, we're just building a sweet home brewery, but leaving the door open to go pro with it. It's obviously a big undertaking, but we feel we need to refine recipes and build up the product before we get too far. At this point, we're basically making a small investment with hopes to expand, rather than taking the plunge blindly. If we feel we have what it takes, we'll invest the rest of the money needed to get it off the ground.

External financial backing to construct a nano-brewery??

BLICHMANN or bust!!!

I don't see how you could ever go "pro" and re-use any part of a 10 gallon system.

MNDan said:

I don't see how you could ever go "pro" and re-use any part of a 10 gallon system.

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Thanks for the input, Dan. We don't intend to reuse much of the 10 gallon system IF we do go pro at some point. Like many breweries, we'd use this system as a pilot brewery and invest in bigger equipment that meets demand.

In our research, the cost of the kettles, controller, and temp probes that make up the 10 gallon system are only a small percentage of the overall investment we're making.

It really seems like you or your boss need to do some research on the option of using this space for going commercial. A let's worry about it later attitude will create a lot of problems for you down the road. I foresee this never going into commercial production, but its nice you have a boss to throw a ton of money into this small homebrew setup.

Good luck.

so.... did this end up going anywhere?

I'll bump as well...anything happening anymore?