Gosh, I'm not keeping up very well, am I?
Ok. Let's talk about stuff you ought to know about. Keeping the taproom stocked is hard. We run a 10 barrel system and you'd think that being able to brew 300+ gallons of beer twice or more a week ought to be sufficient, but surprisingly, it's difficult to keep up with the demands of our customers. The trick is determining what beers they like in any given time period and what you need to think ahead to brew.
We have limited space in our aging room so we have to kind of toe a line in terms of what we can fit in there and age. Of course we LIKE to let the beer sit for a month or so after we keg it and let it mature before we ever send it out to the customer but here's some truth for you, often times we just don't have that luxury. There are times when we only have a week or so to let something sit before we have to send it up to be served because demand on a given beer is so high.
So - inventory management is KEY! I was talking to one of the major guys from Great Northern a few weeks ago. (That was one of the first micros in Montana, heck the country, they opened up darn near 20 years ago.) They have an inventory manager who's sole job is to track the downstairs beer inventory and manage the brewer's schedule FOR THEM.
Can you imagine the joy of being told "Hey Gregg, we're going to need you to brew this for us." Now I know that sounds kind of restrictive, but believe me - it's better than "OH DEAR GOD! WE'RE OUT OF IPA --- AGAIN!" Better yet, Great Northern has an inventory manager just for their tasting room who coordinates with the downstairs guy. The Downstairs guy coordinates with their sales manager who manages the fleet of sales reps who deals with the distributors who sling kegs for them... It's ****ing science and art all worked into a well-oiled machine that I one day hope to not get my hands jammed into and mangled beyond reasonable repair, unless there's disability in it for me. ;-)
So we've put together an in-house keg inventory sheet. Other breweries who use serving tanks can simply monitor the tank levels to see when they reach a specific level and need to make more beer. However since we run on kegs, we really need to monitor our keg counts and brew more beer when we reach a specific count. Unfortunately our process is slightly more difficult in that we move our kegs from the aging room to the serving cooler upstairs. So there are 2 places to keep a count more or less.
So currently, our plan is to track the number of kegs filled when we "finish" a beer. Then, whenever our "aging room" count gets below 10 kegs we plan on making a replacement batch for that beer. That "should" theoretically give us enough time to brew, ferment, finish, keg and age the beer before the final 10 kegs kick. If we find that that's not enough buffer we'll up the base count before we start brewing a backup batch. But there you have it, solving real-world problems 101.
Is it the right answer? **** if I know. I'll tell you in a couple months.