Small brewery preparations. Ideas please

I Am seriously considering starting a small, small brewery. there a few guys here at work who are interested as well. I plan on 10- 15 gallon batches with 4 styles on tap always, and several 6 packs bottled. It would be located in Indiana. Probably Putnam county.

I just want suggestions and ideas. Could be a hobby business or turn into full bore overtime work. Any thoughts

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I don't know... I'd check out probrewer.com for more informed advice, but it seems that all the licensing required would be prohibitively expensive for a hobby business, nevermind all the work you'd have to do to meet zoning regulations and such.

What you want is not possible with such a smallnbrewery. A half barrel!? For a production brewery!? To even meet demand you will brewing almost everyday of the week. This will also be extremely cost prohibitive, and I would think you would never make a profit so essentially you I'll be working for free and you won't ever be able to quit your day time job.

Check out soundbrew.com it will have more answers for you.

Best of luck to you, but I wouldn't count on it panning out how you think.

Lots of small breweries started out as "homebrew plus" setups. It can be done! It can be done with bargain basement cobbled-together setups, even. (the guys at Dogfish Head did it and then they wrote a book about how they did it, to help you out.)

You're going to need bigger batches, and you're going to need fewer beers that you can brew reliably, economically, and near-identically time after time. Lots of other good info about the physical labor and bean-counting on this guy's blog.