Viablility of a nano

I hear nanos are impossible. Please provide feedback for my project.
Nano brewery, 4x4bbl fermenters, 1 bbl brewhouse totaling 32 bbl month. Packaged in 750 ml champaign bottles, self distributed, $84 case totaling $35,553 month. Is this realistic?

First, let me say probrewer.com is a better resource to ask this.

As for your question though, you would clear $33,600 per month @ $7 per bottle. You then have to pay on the loan you took for the brewey and the space. Then there's utilities, licensing and taxes for basic overhead. Not including any money for you.

Next each batch has associated costs (i.e. water for brewing & cleaning, fuel costs to heat everything, ingredients, labeling, and most expensively, bottles & corks).

This all assumes you're even allowed to self-distribute in your state, which is a big assumption. You won't get $7 per bottle if you cannot sell directly to the public.

Financial arguments aside. To get 32 bbls per month with the setup you describe, you would need to brew 4 bbls per day for 8 days out of the month. These will be a minimum of 10 hour days and up to 16 or so if something goes wrong. On non-brew days, you would be cleaning, bottling, labeling, etc. So a 10 hour day is probably the norm. If doing 70 hours of work a week doesn't sound fun, then you need to factor in the cost of hiring someone to help out. Hopefully you get a totally honest, self motivated employee who needs litterally no direction from you, because otherwise, you'll still put in 60 hours a week.

So I guess what I'm saying is, Good Luck!

Great response above.

If you could move the beer, with an outfit that size, the best bet to start out might be doing only growler sales and keg fills. That seems to be the way some of the nanos around here get going (but San Diego County is a very beer-friendly and populated area). Plus, this gives you time to get other things done (i.e., the hoops to jump through) with licensing, labels, distribution, and process refinement.

Thanks for replying. All monthly costs that I've come up with (ingredients, rent, loan repayment, utilities, bond, licensing and fees) total just under $18k a month. My wife and I will be brewing, bottling, distributing outside of our full time jobs so a larger brewhouse is understandably needed.

In Texas we are allowed to self distribute and retail prices for high gravity locally brewed beers go for $10-$13 per 750 ml bottle. So I'm assuming if I wholesale at $7 bottle, $84 case, that would actually make me competitive. Assuming a 30% markup on retail...

Dont know about thw beverage industry. But in mine (telecomm/ce) no one would talk to you for a 30% margin, especially on a perishable product.

A 20-30 percent markup on beer is the going rate in the retail industry.