Going Pro: Ask me anything!

Hey all,

I know there's been a few theads like this in the past, so I hope there's still some interest. I wanted to do a post like this several months ago when we were just starting up, but with how crazy things have been lately it just fell on the back burner. We're about 3-4 weeks out from starting production if nothing goes terribly wrong *knocks on wood*.

Our brief story: My brother and I started homebrewing in college about 7-8 years ago. I was an engineering major, so the technical side of brewing always really appealed to me. We were maybe brewing once a month until the beers actually started getting good, we had friends bugging us to brew more, etc. Unfortunately around this time, our jobs took us out of the country and we didn't have a chance to brew for a few years. Like many of you, we had always talked about opening a brewery, but didn't have the cash and/or know anybody willing to invest. After my parents retired, they came to us and suggested we actually do it for real this time. Naturally, we were ecstatic, quit our job and flew back to the states as soon as possible. We were fortunate enough to find another investor along the way, and here we are. I know we're in a very fortuitous situation and are incredibly thankful for having awesome family that is just crazy enough to think we can do this.

I'm realizing I could go on for hours, so I'll try and cut this short and get to answering any questions you guys have about the whole process. I am by no means an expert, but we were forced to learn a **** ton of stuff along the way. I'm always joking w/ some brewer friends that if we ever opened a second brewery, we would save a ton of money and could eliminate many, many of the headaches!

I'll try and get some pics up here in a minute but the basics of our brewhouse/equipment:

- 20 BBL 2-vessel brewhouse (DME)
- 40 BBL Hot/Cold liquor tanks
- (3) 40 BBL Unis
- (1) 40 BBL Brite

Given how helpful/supportive the entire brewing community has been, I'm really looking forward to helping anybody thinking of taking the same path. Ask me anything! There's (almost) no question I won't answer.

If any of yall are interested in following us on Facebook, we'd be very appreciative: www.facebook.com/b52brewing

What beers will you have on tap? How often will you brew? How much time and money did it take to get this far?

40 BBL to start? You don't screw around do you?

Best of luck!

What was the process from brainstorming to implementation? You don't have to go in to any detail. What were some of your biggest challenges?

Okay, do you have a chef in mind yet? Are you serving pub grub, gastro pub, or burgers fries, pizza, that kind of food? Is there an area away from the bar area, for families to sit at? Do you have something in mind to keep the kids busy after they eat while Mom and or Dad finish their nectar of the gods? Will the kids games be free, or costly? Are you on a public transportation line? Are going to have seasonal rotation beers? Are going to "always " have the same five or more on tap all year long? Are you only going to make Ales? Will there ever be entertainment? Are you ever going to do/join/create projects that benefit the community? How many different types of home brew soda will you have on tap? Will there be opportunities for a Science trip for kids/students to see how soda is made? Are you interested in making available fund raisers for different groups? Have you thought about supporting a specific or multiple charities? Have you considered doing a "money match" type of fundraisers, where all the participants get something, ie. a free pitcher of soda, or a burger, etc.? The top 3 or 5 get a free dinner for their family, or something else, like a free pitcher of soda a week for (x) weeks? Gee if the family is already there, I doubt they will just drink and dash... I'm working on a few more, and I have not yet been to your Facebook page. I didn't know there were such bitchin' business sites like the one you have. And, since you are in Texas y'all will have Brisket sandwiches, right?

The building is a mess right now, so pardon our dust!

Our outdoor tasting area. The taps are going to run from the cold storage through the wall of the shipping container.

What beers will you have on tap? How often will you brew? How much time and money did it take to get this far?

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We're starting w/ just three beers because of our limited cellar capacity, and it isn't 100% set in stone now but we're looking at a hoppy Pils, a Wheat IPA, and an Oatmeal Stout that we can do a lot of seasonal variations on such as smoke, barrel-aged, peppers, etc. Houston isn't that mature of a market yet, so we decided to keep it simplish and focus on quality control over funky (for now).

40 BBL to start? You don't screw around do you?

Best of luck!

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Thank you! We are very, very fortunate to be able to start w/ this capacity.

What was the process from brainstorming to implementation? You don't have to go in to any detail. What were some of your biggest challenges?

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Brainstorming was basically just done at various bars over many, many beers. We had been talking about it for 2-3 years, and maybe spent 3-4 months of actual planning before putting money down for the brewhouse.

As far as challenges, the biggest for me was learning about all the equipment. I ended up spending a month interning at a Rahr & Sons in Fort Worth, which helped out tremendously. We also went on as many brewery tours as possible, talked to the brewers/owners whenever they were willing to, and spent countless hours scouring Probrewer for any info we could find. We considered a consultant at one point, and if we weren't so over-budget I would have liked to go that route. If you have the time and are motivated, you can figure most everything out yourself, but we are probably 2-3 months behind schedule because of it. Not a huge deal for some, but it still sucks throwing money at something and not seeing a return!

Edit: Forgot to add, finding (competent) contractors has been a royal PITA. They generally have wanted way too much money and/or don't know what they're doing. We've been fortunate to not have any major F-ups so far, but it really helps to know what they're supposed to be doing and watch them like a hawk. I highly recommend doing as much work yourself as you feel comfortable with. We actually ended up doing our steam and glycol ourselves which was pretty overwhelming at first, but if you're patient and do your research, it's well worth the money saved and knowledge gained for if/when something goes wrong in the future.

How do you intend on staying relevant in what seems like such a flooded market of new breweries and new beers?

Free beer is always good , but when I'm paying for it I want it to really be stellar! I'm sure you feel that your beer is better than the other breweries around you, but is it really? How can you measure this? Have you measured this?

What avenues have you researched or decided upon for selling your beer and/or do you already have contracts for sales? My understanding is that making the beer should be relatively easy but if it doesn't sell then it doesn't matter.

Edit:
BTW, I'm uber jealous over here

Okay, do you have a chef in mind yet? Are you serving pub grub, gastro pub, or burgers fries, pizza, that kind of food?

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The laws in Texas just changed which was very fortunate for us. We will technically be classified as a Brewpub, but food isn't a requirement anymore. We're looking into doing a food cart at some point, but wanted to keep things simple for now and focus on the beer.

Is there an area away from the bar area, for families to sit at? Do you have something in mind to keep the kids busy after they eat while Mom and or Dad finish their nectar of the gods? Will the kids games be free, or costly?

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We are on almost 7 acres, so we think a big draw will be all the games and outdoor activities we can provide along with the beer.

Are going to have seasonal rotation beers? Are going to "always " have the same five or more on tap all year long? Are you only going to make Ales?

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We're taking a somewhat "wait and see" approach to see what sells, but will almost surely have a few core brands and will definitely have seasonals. I'm considering doing a Pils straight out of the gate, so there will absolutely be some lagers at some point!

Have to grab some lunch, but I'll get back to more of your questions when I get a chance. Cheers all!

Are you focusing mostly on keg or bottle/can sales to your distributor? What percentage of sales do you think your on-premise bar will be?

I own and operate a 1 BBL nano and I am looking to move to a system your size in the next year. Props man, all the best.

20 bbl brewhouse (DME) - I assume that DME is Diversified Metal Engineering, and you're not brewing 20 bbl of extract brew at your brewery

What made you go with 3 fermentation tanks and only one bright tank? Most breweries would go the other way around with 1 fermentation vessel for every 3 bright tanks, plenty on probrewer actually suggest that ratio as a rule of thumb. With only 1 bright tank, you have to keg a ton of beer, increasing your equipment and labor costs.

Congrats, hope it goes well.

I am also planning to open a brewery in Texas in a couple years, so this thread is quite interesting for me, both to see how well you do and to get some really good info for when I start the process of opening my brewery. How does the licensing work? I know there are both state and federal permits, so what I'd like to know is the process from having zero permits to having all the permits you need. My folks live in The Woodlands and I will be visiting around the middle of next month. It'd be cool if you were open by then so I could come try some of your brew. Cheers and good luck!

Fascinating. What are you *doing* with all your beer? I noticed a lot of kegs. Are you serving it on premises? Selling to local bars/restaurants?

Good luck!

How do you intend on staying relevant in what seems like such a flooded market of new breweries and new beers?

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The market really is getting crowded which is why we picked Houston over neighboring Austin. I want to say there are 10-12 breweries in Austin to ~800k people, and Houston only has 6-7 breweries w/ over 2 million. As far as staying relevant, I'm wanting to focus on quality and consistency over anything else. I feel like a lot of breweries are going too "weird" and losing sight of just making solid beers. Also, we're in a pretty immature market, so I want to slowly bring in some of the stuff we've seen do well on the west coast.

Free beer is always good , but when I'm paying for it I want it to really be stellar! I'm sure you feel that your beer is better than the other breweries around you, but is it really? How can you measure this? Have you measured this?

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A lot of the breweries around here are starting to put out some really good beer, but it's still significantly behind the more mature markets IMO. The way I measure this: I buy local whenever possible, but I still find myself buying a lot of beer not from around here! Scientific I know...

What avenues have you researched or decided upon for selling your beer and/or do you already have contracts for sales? My understanding is that making the beer should be relatively easy but if it doesn't sell then it doesn't matter.

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We're going to focus heavily on tours and tap room sales arly on. We've spoken w/ some distributors, but even they recommend we self-distribute as long as possible, so we'll be hitting up a lot of bars/restaurants/etc as well. So far I don't think we've reached the saturation point in Houston at least, so most bars will at least give another local brewery a shot.

Are you focusing mostly on keg or bottle/can sales to your distributor? What percentage of sales do you think your on-premise bar will be?

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The decision to package or not was a big one, but ultimately after some budget over-runs we decided against it for the time being which is just fine in my book. Since this is all pretty new to us, I figured we should focus on one thing (draft) and doing it well.

Also, as I'm sure you guys are intimately aware of, packaging is a royal PITA even on this level. It's expensive, the equipment can be fickle, and once it leaves the brewery you lose a lot of control over the quality. How many times have we bought a new 6-pack and been disappointed when we get old, oxidized beer?

As far as on-premise, from speaking w/ some of our competitors it looks like we could expect up to 25-30% of our sales. Will be interesting to see how this plays out though.

Gotta get back to work...will answer more questions later.

I can't way for a new local brewery! Let me know when you your open

Seven acres? Wow, you could do volleyball courts, horseshoe pits, ladderball, bocce ball... all with a beer in everyone's hands.

Also, would someone mind identifying the various pieces of equipment in the pictures? About all I can easily identify is the conical fermenter.

Ask you anything? OK, what's your full name, DL#, SS#, DOB, current mailing address, mothers maiden name, high school mascot? I'll need this ASAP the way you're spending money.
Just kidding
Water, I worked and lived in WA state for 11 years and all I had to do was preboil the water and made great beer. I moved to Kentucky in May 2012 and I am still struggling to make even drinkable beer with my current water supply.
What is your background in water chimistry? Have you tested your water at your brewing location? What filter system do you plan to use? Will you be able to adjust your water profile to the style of the beers you brew?

So, correct me here if I'm confused. (I mean I AM confused so please, correct away...) You're going with a draft brewery which I suppose means you will only keg and run through your brite tank.

With a 40 bbl system, what kind of accounts do you have to set up to move that kind of beer in kegs and through your taproom? How many people do you expect to visit you on a daily basis? Since the area is so big, you ought to have plenty of outlets "locally" (I say that because Houston is so damn big, locally could be 20 miles away...). Are you self-distributing or are you going through a traditional distributor?

Finally... Here's the one you prolly don't want to answer, what percentage of your monthly expenses are you buffering with over-flow capital and what is your first year operating cash looking like?

Ya... those are the nasty ones...

Conroe huh? Awesome! How long before you guys are up and running and taking on visitors?

What was the total planned investment to get up and running and what is looking like the actual investment after cost over-runs?

Also curious about some of the business plan specifics MuddyCreek brought up......

Congratulations, this is a dream of mine too. If it's not too out of line, what kind of money should you have for starting a brewery and what kind of space is required? Would you be able to list the resources you found most useful as well?

Hey again all...my apologies for the lack of responses. Was a pretty crazy weekend.

What made you go with 3 fermentation tanks and only one bright tank? Most breweries would go the other way around with 1 fermentation vessel for every 3 bright tanks, plenty on probrewer actually suggest that ratio as a rule of thumb. With only 1 bright tank, you have to keg a ton of beer, increasing your equipment and labor costs.

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From everything I understand and every brewery I've been to, it's the opposite. One of the breweries I interned at actually had almost 20 fermentors and only 3 brites! One of the brites was 200 BBL though, so it wasn't slowing production much!

Basically the brite is only used right before packaging and to carbonate the beer. The major downside to not having enough brites would be if, like you mentioned, you don't have enough orders to empty the brite but you still need to keg one of your other brands. That's where adequate cold storage is nice since you could just keg off the whole brite, fill it back up w/ your next beer, rinse, repeat.

If we only had one fermentation tank and three brites, we'd be stuck with one beer in the tank for the potentially 2-4 weeks needed to finish fermentation, cold-crash it, etc. The more fermentation tanks, the more flexibility you have.

Seven acres? Wow, you could do volleyball courts, horseshoe pits, ladderball, bocce ball... all with a beer in everyone's hands.

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Absolutely! I was originally not that thrilled w/ being so far out from downtown Houston, but the extra land for games, events, etc has made me come around.

Also, would someone mind identifying the various pieces of equipment in the pictures? About all I can easily identify is the conical fermenter.

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From the first picture from left to right: Mash/Lauter tun, kettle, cold liquor tank, then fermentation tanks. The hot liquor tank is hard to see but is immediately behind the brewhouse. This was just done to keep all the steam lines as short as possible and in the same vicinity. Directly above the brewhouse is the grist case. We decided to hang it above because we have a lot of vertical space and not much floor space. Our building is only a bit over 3000 sq ft, so we have had to be really efficient w/ how we use it!

I am also planning to open a brewery in Texas in a couple years, so this thread is quite interesting for me, both to see how well you do and to get some really good info for when I start the process of opening my brewery. How does the licensing work? I know there are both state and federal permits, so what I'd like to know is the process from having zero permits to having all the permits you need. My folks live in The Woodlands and I will be visiting around the middle of next month. It'd be cool if you were open by then so I could come try some of your brew. Cheers and good luck!

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Even if we're not open (which I sure hope we are!), feel free to stop on by anyways. We never mind taking a little break and talking beer w/ people!

As far as licensing, my primary focus has been the brewhouse/production side, so I'm definitely not the best person to ask. The lady that's doing all the fun red tape stuff (my mom actually...bless her!) really did a fantastic job getting everything through w/ relatively few headaches. She's up at the brewery almost everyday, so if you ever get a chance to stop by I know she would love to help you out w/ any questions you have.

Have to go take gravity on a couple pilot batches we have bubbling away, but I'll answer more questions later!

I think I was confused on your plans. It seems like your main business will be distributing kegs to outside vendors. If that's the case, then yeah, the brite tank is only used right before packaging and to carbonate the beer, and you're going to be kegging a helluva lot of beer.

I assumed you would have a large taproom for selling beer on premises. In that case, it makes the most sense to use your brite tanks for cold crashing, carbonating, and directly serving the beer. In this case, your fermenters are freed up more quickly b/c you don't need them to cold crash and you can save loads of money and time on packaging since you don't have to keg everything up. If you plan your production schedule correctly, especially with a 20/40 barrel system, you wouldn't have beer sitting in the fermenter waiting for a long time b/c you'd be able to transfer it to a brite within 2 weeks and roll with it from there.

Even in that case, I agree that you'd want more than one fermenter, but in either case, I would want several more brite tanks b/c I think it would pay off in the end. Unless the vast majority of my sales were going to be distribution, I would not want to package that much beer and clean that many kegs, but that's just my opinion.

Good luck on the venture.

What is your background in water chimistry? Have you tested your water at your brewing location? What filter system do you plan to use? Will you be able to adjust your water profile to the style of the beers you brew?

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Other than basic college chemistry, just about everything I've learned about water has been from Probrewer or here. There's SO much good brewing info online these days.

We have tested our water, and other than the alkalinity there's nothing too out of whack. I've looked into using hydrochloric/sulfuric for alkalinity reduction and to augment our chloride/sulfate levels to where we want, but will probably just end up using phosphoric and adjust w/ gypsum and calcium chloride. Other than that, we just installed a large activated carbon filter for chlorine removal, but that's it really. We looked into RO/nano-filtration, but it's just not cost effective on this scale and we can still get just about any water profile we want w/ acids/salts.

So, correct me here if I'm confused. (I mean I AM confused so please, correct away...) You're going with a draft brewery which I suppose means you will only keg and run through your brite tank.

With a 40 bbl system, what kind of accounts do you have to set up to move that kind of beer in kegs and through your taproom? How many people do you expect to visit you on a daily basis? Since the area is so big, you ought to have plenty of outlets "locally" (I say that because Houston is so damn big, locally could be 20 miles away...). Are you self-distributing or are you going through a traditional distributor?

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I must have typed it wrong, but we have a 20 BBL brewhouse and 40 BBL fermentors so we can double batch into them. Next order of tanks will (hopefully) be 80 BBL.

We've spoken w/ a few distributors and interestingly most of them suggested we self-distribute as long as possible which is just fine by me. Only issue is like you mentioned: Houston is REALLY spread out so we won't benefit as much as a lot of other breweries. I still like self-distributing though as it gives us more opportunities to give face time to our accounts and take care of any problems we run into early on.

Also important to note, the new brewpub license in Texas allows us to sell 10k BBL annually, but we can only self-distribute 1k of that before having to purchase an additional license. Shouldn't be a problem early on and my thinking is it will serve as a natural transition into signing w/ a distributor once the demand is there.

Finally... Here's the one you prolly don't want to answer, what percentage of your monthly expenses are you buffering with over-flow capital and what is your first year operating cash looking like?

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I would gladly answer if I actually knew! I've never been very business savvy, so fortunately we have smarter people than I taking care of that side of things. I'll ask next time I get a chance.

When exactly are you guys available for someone to come by and hang out and question you guys in a face to face conversation. I would even be willing to help out for the day wherever needed...do a little grunt work. I am new to the home brew scene and since the start up is fresh in your minds I would like to get some insight. My email is [email protected]

Next week is going to be REALLY busy (we're installing the steam and glycol), but otherwise anytime during the week is fine. I have your e-mail, but feel free to shoot me one as well so I don't forget!

[email protected]