My adventure of opening a brewery in Chicago

I'd love see more detail about the keg washer as well.

If it's not too much to ask, could you also take pictures of your mash tun setup inside?

I live up by Wrigley and would love to support the cause, where can I find you by me?

Demon,

Awesome thread and congrats on your brewery.
You started as a homebrewer and now this. I imagine your lineup of beers now are scaled up versions of your homebrew recipes, or at least variations.
Many times, homebrewers think their beer is as good or better than many commercial beers. Since you been on both sides or it and possibly so with the same recipes on a homebrew level and now a production level, I'm curious about your thoughts on this.
Are you making better beer at this level? Does production change things?


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Thanks Demon! I've been brewing on the 4bbl psycho brew system for 3 months now! A few questions on your new system.

Are you able to raise temp in the mash tun? How?

Can you post a pic of your false bottom?

What do you sparge with?

How do you remove the last of the grain you can't get with a scoop?

How do you Clean the brew kettle?

How do you clean the heating elements?

doublebogey10 said:

Demon,

Awesome thread and congrats on your brewery.
You started as a homebrewer and now this. I imagine your lineup of beers now are scaled up versions of your homebrew recipes, or at least variations.
Many times, homebrewers think their beer is as good or better than many commercial beers. Since you been on both sides or it and possibly so with the same recipes on a homebrew level and now a production level, I'm curious about your thoughts on this.
Are you making better beer at this level? Does production change things?


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

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It is very different. Also, having a good home brew recipe does not mean you should open a brewery. I've met several people that want to open breweries because they won home brew awards. Winning a beer competition and consistently selling beer are very different.

The beer now is better. Production changes a bunch, some good, some bad. We have a production schedule that has to get hit. If we are off by one day it screws up every beer following it. Another aspect of change from home brew to production is recipe formulation. If I scale up a home brew recipe to our system and it's telling me I need 44lbs of some specialty malt, that beer now has 50lbs because I don't want 6 extra lbs of grain sitting around every time we brew that beer. Same applies for hops.

Jcmccoy said:

Thanks Demon! I've been brewing on the 4bbl psycho brew system for 3 months now! A few questions on your new system.

Are you able to raise temp in the mash tun? How?
We can by running through our grant which has a heating element, but we don't. It's not worth the time.
Can you post a pic of your false bottom?
I don't have a pic handy, but picture a giant version of a copper manifold that a home brew cooler mash tun would have
What do you sparge with?
Two of these mounted to a Y. http://www.glaciertanks.com/Spargers_and_Carbonators-Sparging_Arm_1_1_2_x12.html
How do you remove the last of the grain you can't get with a scoop?
Pull the manifold out and use a shovel, then spray with a hose and let it drain out through the bottom valve
How do you Clean the brew kettle?
Depending on the situation we use either PBW or Caustic with a long handled brush
How do you clean the heating elements?
Soak in Acid #5

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Answers in bold.

We are swapping out some equipment... again. New 10bbl dome top kettle and motorized mash tun will be here the first week of December.

ricshayne said:

I live up by Wrigley and would love to support the cause, where can I find you by me?

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We are redoing our website today and it will have a list of accounts. Off the top of my head, not necessarily Wrigleyville, but near there...

Seven Ten Lounge
Beer Bistro North
Lincoln Station
Grafton
Headquarter Beercade
West Lakeview Liqours

Jcmccoy said:

Can you tell me what heating element is in the keg washer sink for the cleaner?

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We've been using this...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BDB4UG/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Some new bottles that are coming out this month. We also got a shiny new bottler.

So how much did it take to get started up, if I might ask? I've toyed around with the idea of opening a Tap Room in my area, but everyone says if you don't have $1 mil then don't bother. Definitely doesn't look like you started with a $1mil by your setup.

Whoever says you need $1,000,000 does not own a brewery. For a small place with a taproom and a 7bbl system you can do it for 1/4 of that, easily. When we started brewing we had around $120k into it. With equipment additions and money spent on buying things we were too poor for in the beginning, we are probably around $160k now, not including the bottling line. We have no taproom though.

With $1,000,000 you could open a production brewery with bottling and canning capable of 25,000bbl+.

Demon said:

Whoever says you need $1,000,000 does not own a brewery. For a small place with a taproom and a 7bbl system you can do it for 1/4 of that, easily. When we started brewing we had around $120k into it. With equipment additions and money spent on buying things we were too poor for in the beginning, we are probably around $160k now, not including the bottling line. We have no taproom though.

With $1,000,000 you could open a production brewery with bottling and canning capable of 25,000bbl+.

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That's what I thought. If I were to throw caution to the wind I don't even think I would start at 7bbl system. Probably something closer to 3bbl. Unfortunately my area has almost no craft breweries at that size, so there's not really a lot of places for me to hit up.

If I can keep bugging you, how did you get started with your brewery? Just decide to dive in head first, or did you test the waters with a small pilot system or contract brewing to gauge interest?

LOVE this thread. Demon, thank you for being so generous enough to share your adventure with all of us, and even answering questions a lot of us would be too scared to ask. This thread has given me a lot of inspiration to keep at my dream.

Please keep posting updates and pics!
-Alex

New semi automatic keg washer was delivered a few weeks ago. On loan to us for a few months from our friends at Pipeworks Brewing while they build their new facility. This thing is awesome. Load three kegs, press a button, come back 6 minutes later and unload them.

Awesome thread! Congrats on opening your brewery. Thanks for all the info along the way too!

How many people went in on the business with you? I'd love to open a brewery but I have no help to do so. I could get the business going alone, wife is an accountant and Dad is a lawyer, but the day to day tasks would be too much for just me to handle alone. I could hire help I guess but I'd like someone to be invested in the business so quality/care is more insured. Plus it would be more fun to go in on it with a friend or brew buddy.

bobeer said:

Awesome thread! Congrats on opening your brewery. Thanks for all the info along the way too!

How many people went in on the business with you? I'd love to open a brewery but I have no help to do so. I could get the business going alone, wife is an accountant and Dad is a lawyer, but the day to day tasks would be too much for just me to handle alone. I could hire help I guess but I'd like someone to be invested in the business so quality/care is more insured. Plus it would be more fun to go in on it with a friend or brew buddy.

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There are four owners. Two work at the brewery and two are silent partners. We have one additional employee. It breaks down to me doing nearly all the brewing related stuff, my brother handles sales so he is out visiting accounts everyday and our one other guy runs operations, so he's dealing with ordering, vendors, paperwork etc.

When we first started I did everything myself. Brewing, packaging, sales, deliveries, paperwork. it was horrible and I don't wish it upon anyone.

Will I be able to buy your beer out here in the suburbs?

Demon said:

When we first started I did everything myself. Brewing, packaging, sales, deliveries, paperwork. it was horrible and I don't wish it upon anyone.

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Pretty much what I was assuming. Thanks for the info and good luck!

Demon said:

Production changes a bunch, some good, some bad. We have a production schedule that has to get hit. If we are off by one day it screws up every beer following it.

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Can you explain this production schedule? How does it screw up the other brews if you're off by a day or two?

Every beer has an exact number of days we allocate a fermenter for it, and our calendar is made 3 months at a time. If one beer is off by two days, it pushes every subsequent beer back. This is also crucial when relying on repitching yeast. If the schedule isn't exact we don't have yeast ready at the right time.

Demon said:

Everything beer has an exact number of days we allocate a fermenter for it, and our calendar is made 3 months at a time. If one beer is off by two days, it pushes every subsequent beer back. This is also crucial when relying on repitching yeast. If the schedule isn't exact we don't have yeast ready at the right time.

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So I'm lazy And don't want to look through a bunch of posts. How's your brewery doing as a guy thinking in the future I'd like to open one myself.

Hey congrats on your new head brewer!

olotti said:

So I'm lazy And don't want to look through a bunch of posts. How's your brewery doing as a guy thinking in the future I'd like to open one myself.

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We're doing well. Expanded into an additional 3300ft of space. Adding more fermenters next week. Our canning line arrived a couple weeks ago, we're just awaiting our can shipment to start packaging. We hired a new head brewer so I can focus on more operational tasks and projects.

adamranders said:

Hey congrats on your new head brewer!

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Thank you. He's quite talented.

Just found this thread last night and finished it this morning. Thanks so much for sharing. I love the detail you've gone into. We are going to Chicago next month and I will try to find your beer when we're there. Best of luck to you.

First I want to say grats on doing well with your brewery, and I'm hoping on getting out the Chicago area for a few days this summer so will definitely have to look your place up.

olotti said:

So I'm lazy And don't want to look through a bunch of posts. How's your brewery doing as a guy thinking in the future I'd like to open one myself.

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One thing I do want to point out is that this "So I'm lazy And don't want to look through a bunch of posts." does not go well with this "thinking in the future I'd like to open one myself.

Personally if I thought there was even a remote chance I wanted to open a brewery sometime I would be devouring every single post in every one of these threads just to see what all those before me had to go through. Also I would want to see what questions others are asking since they might touch on something I hadn't thought about.

The guys spent some time with Good Beer Hunting. Great podcast.

http://goodbeerhunting.com/gbh-podc...hot-brewing-mike-pallen-of-mikerphone-brewing

sub'd

Sounds like things are going great, and I know your busy as all hell, but would love to get one last post of lessons learned, major don't do's, thoughts, and your overall feeling on starting a brewery

24oz "Big Ass Cans" released recently.

Drinking a session IPA named Citra Madness. Really good mouthfeel for a session IPA. 5.5%!

Can't wait for Mosaic Madness!

Can't wait for distro in WI.....Or a day trip to chi town

This is really awesome info as someone who is looking to go the hbs/taproom/brewery route. Any thoughts on size of brewery for starting a tap room? Most of the info I've read says that anything below 7bbl just isn't worth it from the labor cost standpoint but worry that might be too big (I suppose you could brew less) for a taproom... Or maybe brew full size and sell logs? I don't know. This is all in the next year but I've already laid the ground work for a business plan. Do you have any recommendations in initial planning?