Well, licensing is a big issue so I might need you to be a little more specific, but here's the basic rundown of when stuff happens.
- Rent/lease building (yep, you have to be spending money for the entire 1-2 years of licensing)
- THEN: Apply for federal license (all owners have to list everywhere they lived/worked in the past decade, etc)
- (Wait)
- THEN: Apply for state license (ditto the live/work part, and you also need to be fingerprinted)
- If you're doing any construction on the building, it has to be done now.
- Get Certificate of Occupancy or Certificate of Compliance from the city
- Receive state license
- THEN: Apply for retail license to sell growlers
So, we're open and selling but can't fill growlers yet.
We have to designate a step after which the kegs are taxed. So we could theoretically have a keg in our fridge for drinking at the brewery that's not taxed (* I think: I'm the web dude, not the accountant, but I'm pretty sure this is the case) but once we move them to our main cooler they're considered taxed. Obviously anything we sell we have to tax.
Thankfully there are no limits on the abv of what we can make.