NanoBrewery build

CornyKegs 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
@hboss: just finished reading this thread over the course of 3 days and as others have said, you are awesome!

i'm actually not that far from you, living in sunnyvale, ca (~2,5 hours away)! really inspiring story of hard work and plain simple getting stuff done!

i wanted to wish you good luck and i hope to hear more from you!

btw, how is business going lately ?
 
Just finished reading through the entire thread like many before me, and I have to say this has been a great story and look forward to seeing how things go moving forward. Gives me hope that I can open my own nanobrewery some day.

Congrats :mug:
 
VanHorneDog said:
I'm working on a Nano down in San Diego. I know a lot if people down here. Including Mike Hess and some other owners. There are no laws saying that you cannot have chairs or tables. However it can be a condition of you type 23 if local or state agencies make it so. Each license is different and specific. Almost all of the tasting rooms in town have tables and almost all the new ones have chairs. There are about 20 tasting rooms in town now.

Now that local police and agencies know about how tasting rooms work it is less of a concern. I know hours of operation was a factor at one point too but that seems to be changing also.

Contacting ABC for this is not a bad idea. But you will get different answers from different people and enforcement.

We are going to have tables but no chairs for business reasons. Unless it becomes a condition of our license. We are not asking if we can. Since there is precedent already for tables and chairs in San Diego and with Cali ABC.
Click to expand...

Yeah a bunch of the newer places like roughneck, societe, wet n wreckless (sheesh, what a name for a brewery) etc all have seating. I've yet to see anything that limits seating in the ABC paperwork and had previously assumed it was a SD thing, but that always felt odd. Why would the county have an ordinance that superseded cities?
 
Put a fork in me, I'm finally done!

Hey HBHoss, how are your accounts going? Have you opened any more accounts since your last post? It is encouraging to read about your success starting small; it gives all of us other HBers hope that it can be done without taking out massive amounts of debt to make it work. I plan on upgrading my home brewery in the near future and figured that if this is the step I want to eventually take then I should build my home brewery "to code" to make licensing less complicated. It will either makes things easy for me down the stretch or give me one killer home brewery to be proud of; win win in my book.
 
DaveHunter5 said:
Put a fork in me, I'm finally done!

Hey HBHoss, how are your accounts going? Have you opened any more accounts since your last post? It is encouraging to read about your success starting small; it gives all of us other HBers hope that it can be done without taking out massive amounts of debt to make it work. I plan on upgrading my home brewery in the near future and figured that if this is the step I want to eventually take then I should build my home brewery "to code" to make licensing less complicated. It will either makes things easy for me down the stretch or give me one killer home brewery to be proud of; win win in my book.
Click to expand...

Thank you for taking the time to read all this.
No, no new accounts. Winter is a tough time around here. Very little tourist business.
 
HBHoss said:
Thank you for taking the time to read all this.
No, no new accounts. Winter is a tough time around here. Very little tourist business.
Click to expand...

The off-season gives you time to work at the real job and bank some dough. You can also make all those improvements to the brewery!
 
Wow, I know it has been said before, but this is amazing. I got a buddy in your area who I am going to try and send your way.
 
Time for an update.
Last weekend I brewed a Red Ale and then a, what I'm calling, Platinum Blond. It's a blend of my Belgian Blond and a Belgian Pale Ale.
I've been invited to pour at an Irish Festival in Visalia CA on March 16th. So I'm building a 2 spout jockey box to use at events like this and taking my Red Ale and probably my Porter as well as the Platinum Blond. It's time for me to start hitting local events like this and get more recognition out there in the beer drinking world.
There's a possibility of opening a tasting room again. Depends on if the circumstances are right for it.
That's about it for now.
 
HBHoss said:
Time for an update.
Last weekend I brewed a Red Ale and then a, what I'm calling, Platinum Blond. It's a blend of my Belgian Blond and a Belgian Pale Ale.
I've been invited to pour at an Irish Festival in Visalia CA on March 16th. So I'm building a 2 spout jockey box to use at events like this and taking my Red Ale and probably my Porter as well as the Platinum Blond. It's time for me to start hitting local events like this and get more recognition out there in the beer drinking world.
There's a possibility of opening a tasting room again. Depends on if the circumstances are right for it.
That's about it for now.
Click to expand...

If you open one let me know. I'm not far from you in Clovis and am just getting up and running in this hobby. Would love to get the chance to taste some other home brews.
 
For anyone in the Central Valley area who is interested, here's the info.

555426_616792631680804_1630918880_n.jpg
 
tomhen said:
If you are trying to figure numbers you can shoot me an e mail and I can forward a spreadsheet I made up some years ago. It looks like a mess but it is easy to use. Numbers in red are formulas. Just plug in whatever numbers you want and it will tell you if you will make money or not, including bottling, rent, employees, cost of equipment and so forth. I am off to the GABF today so I may not be able to respond as quickly as I would like for the next few days. I will be driving a firkin over about 4 mountain passes and hope that it doesn't pop on me as it will be sitting in the passenger seat. I am doing a seminar Saturday night there. Sorry to get sidetracked. I will also see if there is a way I can just post the spreadsheet on this forum.
Cheers, Tom - [email protected]
Colorado Boy Brewery
Click to expand...

I would love to see that spreadsheet!

btw, I absolutely loved your book! Like many of us on this site, I have a fantasy of one day building a brewpub and your book was great in guiding my thought processes toward that dream.

If you can't post the spreadsheet here, perhaps you could email it to me at [email protected].

Thanks!
 
Awesome build!! Hope to get there someday. It seems you have increased your volume substantially.
Hope to see you at the Irish Fest.
How are your sales going? I did not get to finish the whole thread, I tried but I have a power plant to run :smack:
 
BrewHogDeluxe said:
Awesome build!! Hope to get there someday. It seems you have increased your volume substantially.
Hope to see you at the Irish Fest.
How are your sales going? I did not get to finish the whole thread, I tried but I have a power plant to run :smack:
Click to expand...

Sales are a little slow this time of year.
 
Wow, that is an amazing story Hoss. just finished all 107 pages after 2 days of reading.

I hope to be able to pull something off like that in the future, you are inspiring sir.
 
Awesome thread. Looking forward to trying your brews next time I'm back visiting the Parentals.
 
Stopped by the market to check on stock and noticed nothing on the shelf. There was 1/2 a case last I checked. Seems there was a run on my Porter and they sold out. :ban:
They've ordered 2 cases now. 1 of Porter and 1 of my choice. Looks like things are picking up.
 
HBHoss said:
Stopped by the market to check on stock and noticed nothing on the shelf. There was 1/2 a case last I checked. Seems there was a run on my Porter and they sold out. :ban:
They've ordered 2 cases now. 1 of Porter and 1 of my choice. Looks like things are picking up.
Click to expand...

Awesome news!!! See you Sunday at the Irish Feast :mug:
 
The Visalia Irish Festival was a complete success, Had a great time and there was a huge crowd of people. Lots of compliments on our beers. Enjoyed meeting other brewers and drinkers. Looks like there's a Craft Beer Fest in May, in Visalia, that I've been invited to. Should be a fun one as well. Our booth was right next to the bandstand so we were the go-to beer for the bands. Lots of compliments from them. Being our first festival I think it went very well. Good representation from the big breweries. There was Stone, Firestone, Shocktop, Goose, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams and a few others I don't remember right now. There were also some local area brewpubs and breweries there which really rounded out the styles.
Great Festival. Weather was perfect.

Irish fest2.jpg
 
HBH, do you have a website? I did a search and only find you in the nano list that Hess put together. Somebody go and do a youtube interview video if he approves.
 
Great thread Hoss! I wish you all the best with your endeavor.

I just wanted to thank you for inspiring people like me to pursue a dream. Starting as small as you did, it makes me think it's not too out of reach. I'm starting small... got my ideas all lined up and trying to get all the ducks in a row before I take the plunge. Just upgraded to a 10-gal system... Baby steps. I don't just want to do brewing either, but provide quality food as well. So that will be a separate challenge that I will need to hurdle.

Cheers to you bud! :mug:
 
mattmeiske12 said:
Great thread Hoss! I wish you all the best with your endeavor.

I just wanted to thank you for inspiring people like me to pursue a dream. Starting as small as you did, it makes me think it's not too out of reach. I'm starting small... got my ideas all lined up and trying to get all the ducks in a row before I take the plunge. Just upgraded to a 10-gal system... Baby steps. I don't just want to do brewing either, but provide quality food as well. So that will be a separate challenge that I will need to hurdle.

Cheers to you bud! :mug:
Click to expand...

Thank you and good luck to you!
10 gallon batches are easy to control and give you about 2 cases of brew. You may have to brew more often but to start it's excellent. I'm mostly doing 10 gallon batches right now to keep it fresh and it's easy to do. Plus I'm not brewing the same thing over and over I keep changing it up making 1 bbl batches just not reasonable right now.
Again, good luck in your quest.
 
Brew day today. Brewing my Mariposa Amber. I usually use Cascade hops for both bittering and aroma but this time I'm going to use Nelson Savin hops for the aroma. It's also a citrusy hop like the Cascade but more potent and berry like. Only bumping up the IBU's by 3 points overall so it will still be the mellow Amber I like.
 
Yes, it's time to start brewing up a nice supply for spring customers! Do you brew any "lawn mower" type beers for the hikers who may not want a real malty beer?
 
limulus said:
Yes, it's time to start brewing up a nice supply for spring customers! Do you brew any "lawn mower" type beers for the hikers who may not want a real malty beer?
Click to expand...

Yes, I have the Amber which was created as a session beer and I also have a Belgian Pale Blond Ale which is now available in the Pioneer Market along with the Porter.
 
The Nelson Savin hops did not arrive as planned so I didn't brew yesterday. Going to brew today and I'm going to try another Hopunion blend of citrusy hops called "Zythos". Similar to the Nelson blend but may not be quite as potent. Once the Nelson blend arrives I'll just be forced to brew again and compare the 2. ;)
 
My absolute favorite IPA is Societe's The Pupil. They use Nelson Sauvin and Citra. It's absolutely delicious. I bet you will be very happy with whatever finished product the Nelson goes into when it arrives :)
 
Tupperwolf said:
My absolute favorite IPA is Societe's The Pupil. They use Nelson Sauvin and Citra. It's absolutely delicious. I bet you will be very happy with whatever finished product the Nelson goes into when it arrives :)
Click to expand...

That's good to hear. Just smelling the Zyphos vs. the Cascade, the Zyphos is a lot more citrusy whereas the Cascade is very piney. Should make for an interesting comparison.
 

Similar threads

Tommydee
Fridgidaire Gallery French Door Refrigerator Kegerator Build - 5 taps, 2.75” spacing
Replies
9
Views
833
Bassman2003
B
A
BrewPiLess esp32 Build
Replies
4
Views
463
DuncB
D
Rodent
Gardening: Raised Beds for veggies
Replies
24
Views
1K
Deadalus
Deadalus
mendozer
Input on frame build
Replies
13
Views
1K
mendozer
mendozer
MajorJC
ADHD Brewing ...
Replies
2
Views
934
MajorJC
MajorJC
InkBird 300

Latest posts

Back
Top