Opening a Brewpub

3 years ago I started my quest to open a brewpub - now in 10 days from now, NOT ME, but two good friends will finally open their doors.

The thing is 3 years ago I asked this forum "if you had 6 taps, what 6 styles would you have on tap" and I collected all the data.

Now I'd like to ask again (they will have 12 taps). I'll list the results in a week or so.

BTW - they are going to write a book about ALL the problems with opening a brewpub, The BIGGEST so far was getting a 12 foot range hood installed, getting ripped off by contractors, secret government documents that need to be signed that appear out of no where. The brewing part is easy.

The one thing I have heard out of the few other brewpubs owners I have talked to is it costs MUCH more then you would suspect.

This is a small place - a Home Brew pub basically - not so fancy shiny place but a 49 seat, small town place - 2 barrel system.

Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Bud Lite, Coors Light, Lite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Schaefer, Michelob, Michelob Ultra, Busch.

It'll be all the rage!!

I'd say at least a few different session beers, a couple Belgian wits (flavored and non) for the ladies, four different levels of hoppy beers, a porter, stout, and a new/experimental brew to test the response.

Your question can be answered in two ways:

1) what six beers would I like to have on tap?

and

2) what six beers do I think would be the best sellers to have on tap?

I'll answer the first question: 1) APA, 2) IPA, 3) Stout, 4) American Amber, 5) a light German-style lager like a Dortmunder Export, and 6) a rotating specialty beer.

Pappers - what six beers do I think would be the best sellers to have on tap?

kh54s10 - this town of 5000 has 6 bars and that is ALL they have - when I moved here from Madison I went to the most non-dive bar and said - what do you have. "Miller, Miller Light, Bud Bud Lite" that was it! even the liqueur store sells only that garbage. I had 60 responses from 3 years ago so this hopefully will be interesting. I was kind of surprised by the results from before.

Pappers_ said:

Your question can be answered in two ways:

1) what six beers would I like to have on tap?

and

2) what six beers do I think would be the best sellers to have on tap?

I'll answer the first question: 1) APA, 2) IPA, 3) Stout, 4) American Amber, 5) a light German-style lager like a Dortmunder Export, and 6) a rotating specialty beer.

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What he said, plus:
sneak a couple casks in there
Scottish ale
Porter
If possible, a sour

Cover all bases, American, English, German styles etc. Ales and Lagers. Pales, Ambers, Browns, Stouts, Ipa's
Keep 1/2 to 3/4 of the taps loaded with best sellers and the others with specialties.

Hope you took my first reply as intended.

It's a joke son, it's a joke! - Foghorn Leghorn -

Grinder12000 said:

This is a small place - a Home Brew pub basically - not so fancy shiny place but a 49 seat, small town place - 2 barrel system.

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If business is good, and I hope it is, will they be able to keep all 12 taps populated with brewed beer, or do they expect to sell some commercial beers as well?

Here's what I would imagine your core beers would be.

Light Lager or Kolsch aimed towards BMC drinkers
Amber
American Pale Ale
IPA
Stout or Porter
American Wheat or Wit
Bavarian Hefeweizen

Ed - by LAW (a secret rule we found out) if you have food you MUST have someone else's beer on tap, I believe it will be Aly Asylum out of Madison.

12 taps populated with brewed beer?

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I say no and certainly not in the beginning - I know I'll be brewing as a guest brewer, but I, and they know it'll be a stretch. remember - only seating for 49 people (by law) and it's a town of Miller lovers!

They got their website going Hydro Street Brewing Company - explains a little

NOTE - I see 10 taps - not 12 and I see 1 barrel twice a day - not a 2 barrel system - my bad

A new brewpub opening in WI? How about some intel for those of us that live here? PM me if you would like. I would be more than happy to help them by drinking some of their beer!

You keep hinting that the town is full of Miller lovers. In the interest of remaining profitable, you might want to keep that in mind when choosing your beers. It's great to have 4 different IPA's on tap when you are in an area where the majority of your patrons will be able to tell the difference between then, but bad for business when only the owners want to drink them.

Any "education" is going to be a slow process - at least from a profit point of view. Consider starting off with "lighter" styles of beer and working in the more craft-centric styles over a period of time.

First impressions are everything, and that guy who walks into your bar expecting Miller (or at least something like it), but only finds beers he would label as "heavy" and "dark" or "too bitter", isn't going to be coming back to spend any money.

^^ what Airborneguy said...

The local pub/breweries here are filled with people who have Coors Light in a bottle. Be prepared, this is a business after all.

That's what I found out. I called my local bar to see if I could score some bottles. Initial response is that we already have someone picking up bottles to recycle them. Told him I was learning to brew and needed about 100 bottles.. Oh, OK.. come on down. I did.. picked up 12 or 13 cases (6 six packs in each). Should have looked inside. In 13 cases I found 1/2 case of brown bottles and one case of Corona. Rest had threaded tops.

Bud Lite, Coors Lite were by far the most of the "stash".. now at the recyclers.

Ok, If I was in your friends shoes and I had 12 taps, I would have 7 micro commerical brews just to be sellers like Rogue, Elysian, Dechutes ect...The good ones. Then have 2 commercial brew Coors, Miller, Bud ect...Then I would have 3 rotating seasonal "House Brews" that would be brewed in served only at the pub. But not just any random recipe a top knotch recipe like a 1st place comp brew. Congrats to your friends on opening up their new shop. All in all Just have good brew on tap and hopefully if its in the right location they can stay busy all year round. Now it all about making the money homebrew style.

OK here in Des Moines, a couple years back, a guy opened a non-for-profit performing arts club, then he got a liqueur licenses to see beer, wine and drinks, in a bar like setting. So now his got a non-for-profit bar, nice move on his part.

Thinking that would be a great way to open a brew pub, but for the different type of beers that I would put into a pub, keeping profit in mind, would be a list be heavily rated to the lighter beers of the world, it’s all about making money.

Good points - the good thing is that this area is dope with breweries, this place is the perfect location, on a highway that is used by many many people for it's non-interstate-ness. There are a LOT of people in the area that really want a place to go for good beer AND it will have a full grill.

I feel that while the brewery will make money the grill will make a lot also! Plus they really have it together with the little things.

Our town is screaming for an alternative. PLUS - this town of 5000 at one time had Americas largest Brewery's and malting operation, The Kurth. 100 barrels a day and over 1 million bushels of barley.

just a suggestion, have them run a spell check on their website...

dfss1 - where about - I just reread it - don't see anything glaring out at me besides "Whats" should be "What's" which would not be a spelling check on the entire site

This has inspired me to look into this. I am currently looking into what it takes to open a brewpub where I live. Maybe in 3-4 years I will be opening my doors.

RandomBeerGuy said:

Ok, If I was in your friends shoes and I had 12 taps, I would have 7 micro commerical brews just to be sellers like Rogue, Elysian, Dechutes ect...The good ones. Then have 2 commercial brew Coors, Miller, Bud ect...Then I would have 3 rotating seasonal "House Brews" that would be brewed in served only at the pub. But not just any random recipe a top knotch recipe like a 1st place comp brew. Congrats to your friends on opening up their new shop. All in all Just have good brew on tap and hopefully if its in the right location they can stay busy all year round. Now it all about making the money homebrew style.

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^This. Its going to be really tough having more than 3-4 house brews off the bat. Become well known as a good beer bar that also brews good beer. Then slowly sneak in another tap of house beer every so often until you can handle more taps.

We have a place where I work that is similar except they only ever have 1 tap of house beer. The carry great craft beer and their beer is...well...ok. But, they have a great social media presence and people clammer to get there when they release a new house beer. Social media is your friend, they should have people "liking" and tweeting about them before their doors open. Specially if there is a college anywhere nearby.

I would ditch the BMC and throw some alternatives like the ones mentioned in previous posts (kolsh, am. lagers and whatnot). Keep some in bottles though if you must.

It does not appear they have a particular beer theme... just a standard brewpub with mixed offerings? What are they best at brewing. I firmly believe a place is made more special by having a specific direction. You can always diversify from your main theme, but the beer list will be more centered if it has a direction.

That said here are a few things I would contribute.
1. They will not brew a better lager than BMC for the crowd that prefers it. If they want to get into craft lagers that is one thing, but putting a generic and half assed "light" beer on the menu never makes sense to me. People who prefer BMC will still prefer that, and those who like a good craft lager (think New Glarus and Capitol) will not be impressed by an after thought light beer. Put Miller and Bud on tap depending on your town, Not sure where Columbus stands but you are pretty close to the Bud/Miller divide in WI.

2. If they are going to invest in the equipment to do lagers the right way, kill that and dedicate 2-3 taps to craft lagers and sellt he crap out of that. WI is about the only place in the US doing any volume of craft lager.

3. It seems like they intend to be an ale house, so follow 1 and 2 and put some mass produced lager on tap to make those people happy, then consentrate on the ales.

So following those ideas, from the website it seems like they want to focus on locavores and responsibly sourced materials. Here is a list I would start with and the order I would roll them out.

Beers:
1. Macro Light
2. Micro lager of choice
3. Pale ale
4. Robust porter
5. Bavarian wheat
6. American IPA
7. Belgian blonde
8. A good brown or red of some kind (not a west coast red for the main line up)
9. Rotating experimental tap I
10. Rotating experimental tap II

The idea would be to have a completely rounded offering and focus the consumer on local ingredients to focus the theme. This is a difficult list to maintain however, because you have a number of fermentation temperatures and at least 3 yeast strains to manage. An alternative would be to focus on one specialty then use the rotating taps for experiments. For example, an English ale house (Standard bitter, Best bitter, ESB, IPA, northern brown, brown porter, dry stout). You could do all of that with one yeast strain and a few hop varietals.

RandomBeerGuy said:

I am currently looking into what it takes to open a brewpub where I live. Maybe in 3-4 years I will be opening my doors.

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A couple of fellow brewers and I here in West Texas have dabbled with the idea of opening something slightly different; a small commercial microbrewery.

My love for brewing beer doesn't necessarily translate into a love for serving greasy nachos and cheese sticks, dealing with drunks, and providing a venue for the horrors of karaoke every Wednesday night. The brewing aspect aside, the rest sounds like a little slice of hell.

On the other hand, with a brewery, we could instead supply area bars and retailers with product in bottles and kegs, bypassing all the headaches and frustrations associated with bar/restaurant ownership.

Of course, this is little more than a dream in passing that gets talked about at the odd brew club meeting. I stay busy and happy in my career as a professional artist and musician, so I doubt I'll ever seriously venture into such a thing. But I always throw it out there as a suggestion whenever somebody starts talking about opening a brewpub, where there are so many other responsibilities that making the actual beer often becomes the afterthought.

Grinder12000 said:

Ed - by LAW (a secret rule we found out) if you have food you MUST have someone else's beer on tap, I believe it will be Aly Asylum out of Madison.

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That's bizarre. Here in Oregon, if you sell alcohol, you must serve food. Since they'll have to have someone else's beer on tap, maybe make it a rotating specialty tap. When that keg kicks something else takes the tap. Get people excited for what's up next.

This place is a classic DIY Brewpub. They built all the furniture, bars, walls, bathrooms and so forth. Electric and plumbing was of course contracted out! Brewing will be partially under the hood next to the kitchen (by law).

maxam - I believe that is the plan but that's going to be a work in progress also - $$ is short. 12 foot long 700lb range hood installation cost $16,000.

I would call it an speak easy grill homebrew/craft beer bar with wine and some mixed drinks and food in an old historic building (that's redundant)

Mongrel - that is the rule in Wisconsin - sort of a catch 22. In order to get a liqueur license ($15,000) you must serve food, if you brew your own beer AND serve food you must also serve someone else beer. BUT . . . . beer tax is only only $2 a barrel.

Tim_Kreitz - 40s and 50s music, no TV except for Football and drinking games to the City Council. Drunks PROBEBLY will not be a problem for expensive beer - that seems to be the key for bars now - craft beer bars are pretty tame. Personally I would not like brewing beer I don't like.

Grinder12000 said:

Personally I would not like brewing beer I don't like.

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That's why I likely won't go into business. Once you make that leap though, you may have to brew beer you don't like, or you'll find yourself back in your home doing it for free again.

Beers:
1. Macro Light
2. Micro lager of choice
3. Pale ale
4. Robust porter
5. Bavarian wheat
6. American IPA
7. Belgian blonde
8. A good brown or red of some kind (not a west coast red for the main line up)
9. Rotating experimental tap I
10. Rotating experimental tap II
.....

looks like a pretty good list right there and rotate in some seansol beers

Tim_Kreitz said:

A couple of fellow brewers and I here in West Texas have dabbled with the idea of opening something slightly different; a small commercial microbrewery.

My love for brewing beer doesn't necessarily translate into a love for serving greasy nachos and cheese sticks, dealing with drunks, and providing a venue for the horrors of karaoke every Wednesday night. The brewing aspect aside, the rest sounds like a little slice of hell.

On the other hand, with a brewery, we could instead supply area bars and retailers with product in bottles and kegs, bypassing all the headaches and frustrations associated with bar/restaurant ownership.

Of course, this is little more than a dream in passing that gets talked about at the odd brew club meeting. I stay busy and happy in my career as a professional artist and musician, so I doubt I'll ever seriously venture into such a thing. But I always throw it out there as a suggestion whenever somebody starts talking about opening a brewpub, where there are so many other responsibilities that making the actual beer often becomes the afterthought.

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My partner and I are sitting down this friday to go over what we want to do. We live an huge mircobrewery state, So micros are plenty. We both love beer and everything beer. But the only downfall to opening up a brewery off the jump is no one knows you or your brews. We want to start up a tap house with many taps and when we start to get known we will toss in a couple of our brews to break people into homebrewing. We just want a place where people can sit back and expierence our states micro scene.

RandomBeerGuy said:

My partner and I are sitting down this friday to go over what we want to do. We live an huge mircobrewery state, So micros are plenty. We both love beer and everything beer. But the only downfall to opening up a brewery off the jump is no one knows you or your brews. We want to start up a tap house with many taps and when we start to get known we will toss in a couple of our brews to break people into homebrewing. We just want a place where people can sit back and expierence our states micro scene.

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However it works out, make sure you allow in the budget for an adequate marketing campaign. Best wishes and keep us posted.

Is this brewpub in Columbus? I may have to stop by sometime.

I just found this place. https://www.facebook.com/pages/House-of-Brews/118564684830407

Might want to look into what they offer.

Tim_Kreitz said:

However it works out, make sure you allow in the budget for an adequate marketing campaign. Best wishes and keep us posted.

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Big 10-4

1. IPA
2. Pale Ale
3. Stout
4. Brown
5. Belgian Trippel
6. American-style Dark Ale

Grinder12000 said:

BTW - they are going to write a book about ALL the problems with opening a brewpub, The BIGGEST so far was getting a 12 foot range hood installed, getting ripped off by contractors, secret government documents that need to be signed that appear out of no where. The brewing part is easy.

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Further evidence sustaining my opinion it is 80% business skills and 20% about the product. Also remember this is a brewpub serving food, so it's two businesses in one. Have one owner manage the beer side and the other owner manage the food side.

The one thing I have heard out of the few other brewpubs owners I have talked to is it costs MUCH more then you would suspect.

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Any business is like that. Opening a business is just like home improvements: double the cost and triple the time.

This is a small place - a Home Brew pub basically - not so fancy shiny place but a 49 seat, small town place - 2 barrel system.

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Figure 5 barrels per seat per year. 245 barrels on a 2bbl system is 123 batches. That's a lot of work.

49 seats total. Can't go larger or else there are a lot of new rules to have to worry about.

Inspections Monday. Opening Tuesday if inspect go well. Crossing fingers

What are they fermenting in? Size? Number of FV's?

It's a complete DIY Brewpub, should have been a reality show - 49 seat capacity, FVs??? Shoestring budget! Total homebrewer project - not some glitzy fancy thing. 30 gallon system twice a day. Good question on the "in" as the brewery part is still under construction.

Tomorrow they should have 4 beers on tap but will probably run out.. I would say it's more of a pub-brew with a fantastic grill AND homebrew on tap. So perhaps "taproom" would be a better name??

Health inspection went fine - building inspectors tomorrow. STILL working on getting the 700 lb 12 foot long range hood installed.

Fermentation Vessels...

What are they fermenting in? How many are they using? Fermentation capacity is a big consideration...

Not trying to be negative, btw, just curious... Two 1bbl batches a day means either big fermenters or lots of them...

dedhedjed said:

Not trying to be negative, btw, just curious... Two 1bbl batches a day means either big fermenters or lots of them...

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I help with a local nano on occasion and they do two 50g batches a day. Fill a 120g fermentor on wheels. They don't have a ton of room I think they manage with 4 fermentors. It's doable. 8 hour brewday right there.