There are three brewers in the location now and they are looking to get a fourth. They have been doing it for the past 4 or 5 years and the idea behind it is to jump start your brand before stepping up to a full brewery. I am not sure how much overlap in styles there are between them or if they each have their own genres. I know one of them has a few different sours and bretty styles.
Becoming a professional, thoughts/perspective?
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Something hoppy, something malty, something dark, something funky/sour something wheaty and something lite. Then other fun stuff like barrels, Belgiums, different IPAs, saisons, etc as space allows.
There’s a few bereweries that became successful with one style (i.e. Funkworks with Saisons or Stone with IPAs) but they we’re amazing at what they did. Look at successful breweries and what their line up is. You’ll notice most of the big guys have one beer that makes them most of the money, and it’s not always the same style, they just did a great job making/marketing it.
Then there’s the guys that you get a 12 pack sampler from and none of them are even good beer, let alone great beer, and you wonder how they can possibly be successful, yet there they are.
There’s a few bereweries that became successful with one style (i.e. Funkworks with Saisons or Stone with IPAs) but they we’re amazing at what they did. Look at successful breweries and what their line up is. You’ll notice most of the big guys have one beer that makes them most of the money, and it’s not always the same style, they just did a great job making/marketing it.
Then there’s the guys that you get a 12 pack sampler from and none of them are even good beer, let alone great beer, and you wonder how they can possibly be successful, yet there they are.
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I think it was said one for another above and more than once. but you need to have something for the macro Brew drinkers. If you have five guys going out and even if only one of them drinks Bud Light they are going to go where that one guy can get a Bud Light on the rest of them can get craft beer. So have something easy to drink for them. An nice American Lager or maybe a blonde? I think it just depends on what will being them in
I definitely agree on the variety pack issue, it makes me wonder how they got so big when 3/4 of the options are not great or good.
Many places (like VA) you can't do your own cider with a brewery license. Bringing in outside cider requires a license to sell cider/wine, gotta get it from a distributor, and then I think you have to sell food too.
You may be able to do your own root beer. Did at my last job (easy to do, just requires care, but the margins are very good), but then the place was a brewpub. As root beer falls under food and not alcohol it may be an issue for a strict taproom.
The other part, be prepared to give LOTS of money to lawyers.
You may be able to do your own root beer. Did at my last job (easy to do, just requires care, but the margins are very good), but then the place was a brewpub. As root beer falls under food and not alcohol it may be an issue for a strict taproom.
The other part, be prepared to give LOTS of money to lawyers.
Northern_Brewer
British - apparently some US company stole my name
Sam Smith style - a single 4% bitter from wooden kilderkins, plus a couple of lagers.
OK, even in the UK Sam's are the only ones who do that.
Sounds great. But that's all very well, but what resources do they need to support that?
Here's an idea :
Do the maths - they were brewing 500 gyles a year, essentially double brews every weekday unless they're brewing high gravity and diluting. That's not realistic if you're on your own.
Despite all those blueberry wheats and tripels, 75% was a 5.1% Chinook/Nugget pale ale. They are certainly not alone in having one beer that sells in that proportion - any small brewery that gets big seems to do have that one "marquee" beer that gets them into a place, and then the customer might take the odd extra barrel of seasonal/weird stuff. It's well worth sitting at a bar and just watching what gets ordered - you'd be surprised how "mundane" most orders are. That's especially true of lager - even "beery" places can be selling >50% lager.
So think about what your marquee beer would be, and try and refine it. I can think of breweries who have "made it" with everything from a plum porter to a DIPA to an ordinary golden session beer. You've got an interesting setup there, which changes the dynamic a bit I guess - you don't have to try and cover the full range of beers. But just two tanks is a bit of a limitation, in particular if you want to do lagers. Maybe a lager-style steam beer using Californian lager yeast fermented warmish and without lagering, but using pilsner malt and noble (or US-noble-ish) hops? Dark wise, I think dunkel weizens are underrated, particularly in warm weather, but a porter/stout may make a better jumping off point for fruit additions and barrel ageing.
There's various ways to get more beers on the bar from a single brew, from the traditional UK brewers trick of selling a bottled brown ale that was just the draught bitter/pale mild with caramel in it, to partigyling. It's no bad thing to think in terms of what you can do with common ingredients, from yeast to grists to hops - if you look at Pisgah their core beers are almost all Nugget and Chinook, and they obviously use a lot of Mt Hood too. And don't think you can just order boxes and boxes of rare hops like Galaxy either!
An interesting example is Cloudwater, who make a point of not having a single "core" beer, but they seem to have settled down to having variations on a theme around four set points. All pale and hoppy, but they have a 2.9% table beer, a 4.8% hoppy helles, a pale ale around 5.5% and a DIPA. That's not a bad set to think about.
OK, even in the UK Sam's are the only ones who do that.
Sounds great. But that's all very well, but what resources do they need to support that?
Here's an idea :
Do the maths - they were brewing 500 gyles a year, essentially double brews every weekday unless they're brewing high gravity and diluting. That's not realistic if you're on your own.
Despite all those blueberry wheats and tripels, 75% was a 5.1% Chinook/Nugget pale ale. They are certainly not alone in having one beer that sells in that proportion - any small brewery that gets big seems to do have that one "marquee" beer that gets them into a place, and then the customer might take the odd extra barrel of seasonal/weird stuff. It's well worth sitting at a bar and just watching what gets ordered - you'd be surprised how "mundane" most orders are. That's especially true of lager - even "beery" places can be selling >50% lager.
So think about what your marquee beer would be, and try and refine it. I can think of breweries who have "made it" with everything from a plum porter to a DIPA to an ordinary golden session beer. You've got an interesting setup there, which changes the dynamic a bit I guess - you don't have to try and cover the full range of beers. But just two tanks is a bit of a limitation, in particular if you want to do lagers. Maybe a lager-style steam beer using Californian lager yeast fermented warmish and without lagering, but using pilsner malt and noble (or US-noble-ish) hops? Dark wise, I think dunkel weizens are underrated, particularly in warm weather, but a porter/stout may make a better jumping off point for fruit additions and barrel ageing.
There's various ways to get more beers on the bar from a single brew, from the traditional UK brewers trick of selling a bottled brown ale that was just the draught bitter/pale mild with caramel in it, to partigyling. It's no bad thing to think in terms of what you can do with common ingredients, from yeast to grists to hops - if you look at Pisgah their core beers are almost all Nugget and Chinook, and they obviously use a lot of Mt Hood too. And don't think you can just order boxes and boxes of rare hops like Galaxy either!
An interesting example is Cloudwater, who make a point of not having a single "core" beer, but they seem to have settled down to having variations on a theme around four set points. All pale and hoppy, but they have a 2.9% table beer, a 4.8% hoppy helles, a pale ale around 5.5% and a DIPA. That's not a bad set to think about.
OP's question was regarding what beers. I gave him a fairly comprehensive response as to what I'd do, and what another brewery had done.
Sorry if you didn't appreciate my input.
Northern_Brewer
British - apparently some US company stole my name
All input is welcome - I was just making the point that what looks cool to a customer can involve work behind the scenes that's unrealistic for someone just starting out. Pisgah didn't get there overnight, and it's maybe no coincidence that the people on this thread who are in the industry are the ones pointing the OP towards a narrower range (even before we were told about the shared facility thing).
Just as an exercise, have a think what facilities and how many brewdays you would need to keep your 16 taps fed with beer. You can get cute with partigyles etc, but it's still a lot.
Just as an exercise, have a think what facilities and how many brewdays you would need to keep your 16 taps fed with beer. You can get cute with partigyles etc, but it's still a lot.
mulletmaster
Well-Known Member
One though if you are using a communal brew space is what precautions are taken if someone is brewing sours? Most breweries that do both have dedicated equipment and different areas/buildings to avoid contamination .
Don’t put the sour beer in the clean beer. Easy enough.
But seriously I know a lot of breweries producing excellent qualities of both clean and sour beers that are hesitant to commercially package sours due to the cross-contamination risks. They’ll serve them in-house all day though. And the ones that do commercial packaging of unpasteurized sours will use a separate bottling line.
BeerBrewerTrain
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Ipa is the entry level craft beer its like an explosion to use newbs all that flavor so much aroma etc then porter comes along and says so you like flavors eh well how about rich flavors that are well balanced unfortunitely most ppl only get into the entry level then you look into the world of brews and the options are endless.
I agree Ipa,Porter,Ale,Lager,Unqiue,Around the world.
I agree Ipa,Porter,Ale,Lager,Unqiue,Around the world.
Before deciding on the flavors of beer to produce it might be best to look into the cost of equipment, the brewing method and the ingredients used to make Ale and Lager. It would be better that you learn how to produce Ale and Lager before opening up a brewery, it is more rewarding. With the five years of homebrewing experience that you have and with learning how to make homebrew from books written about making homebrew you are quite a distance away from knowing how to produce authentic Ale and Lager. You'll need to purchase very expensive books, Wulf's Journals are about 1500 bucks for a pair of pre 1960 journals with all of the pages intact, and it's best to have someone train you in the science involved with brewing Ale and Lager. It helps to have prior education in chemistry and biology because it makes understanding the stuff in brewers journals easier to understand. The artsy, craftsy part comes after years of training.
Craft Brewer is an advertising slogan used to disguise quick and easy to produce, low quality, Prohibition style beer that homebrewers turned craftbrewers produce. Prohibition style beer was renamed Real Ale by CAMRA back in the early 1970's when Dave Line invented the homebrew industry and a BS story about Real Ale and how it is produced caused the homebrew empire to expand into craft brewing. The beverage became a hit with people who enjoy drinking ragged, imbalanced beer with excessive amounts of hops added to mask off flavors and deterioration inherent in Prohibition style beer. To each, his own.
The stories about Ale, the dreamed up styles of Ale such as saison, barnyard beer, NEIPA and the 100K recipes that go with the styles of Ale all written by the homebrew sales team at RDWHAHB Inc. set the hook. To set the hook deeper criteria was established for judging Prohibition style beer and during a contest awards are given for the best Ale and Lager to a brewer that never produced a drop of the beer. To figure out if beer is Ale or Lager all that a judge needs before tasting beer is the spec sheet for the malt that was used to make the beer and to ask the brewer if the beer was made by single temperature infusion. It makes it easy because when modern, fully modified malt makes the beer and single temperature infusion is the brewing method the beer isn't Ale or Lager it is Prohibition style beer.
Next time you are with the commercial homebrew guru's at the homebrew club ask them for the spec sheet for the malt they use and ask the HBS person for a spec sheet for the malt in stock. They probably won't know what you are talking about. A spec sheet comes with every bag of malt and it is used by the person interested in purchasing malt for determining if the malt is capable of producing Ale and Lager. A spec sheet exists because malt is very inconsistent and without a spec sheet there is absolutely, no way a recipe recommending to use a certain type of malt is accurate. When a recipe recommends purchasing 2 row pale malt, it is similar to asking a person to purchase a 2 door car. It's not a bad idea to become familiar with the acronyms, chemical names and numbers listed on a spec sheet, you'll need to know about the stuff before purchasing malt so you don't get screwed by a shyster malt salesman after you open the brewery.
There are two types of malt on the market and since you received training from homebrew books and follow homebrew recipes you are purchasing magical, fully modified, high protein malt that someone convinced you is capable of producing Ale by soaking the malt in hot water for an hour using one temperature which due to the make up of malt and how enzymes work on starch and sugar will not produce Ale and Lager. It is chemically and enzymatically impossible to produce Ale and Lager by soaking malt for an hour at one temperature.
There is under modified, low protein malt which is expensive and used for producing Ale and Lager and there is low cost, fully modified, high protein malt used for making whiskey, malt syrup, homebrew and most craftbrew. To make Ale and Lager with fully modified malt enzymes are added and a conversion rest is used along with secondary fermentation which for some reason is a no-no, never do, in homebrewing and I would think that the same technology moved into craft beer production. When modern, fully modified distillers grade malt is used instead of expensive brewers grade malt secondary fermentation isn't needed which increases profit margin and reduces the chance for the beer to oxidize or Gram-N bacteria from taking hold. Only primary fermentation vessels are required to make Prohibition style beer.
If the recipes that you are going to use in your new brewery recommends using fully modified malt, single temperature infusion, only primary fermentation and adding priming sugar or CO2 for carbonation the beer produced will be similar in quality to Prohibition style beer which is not close to the quality of authentic ale and lager.
You'll need to figure in the higher cost of brewers grade malt, the time and equipment involved with secondary fermentation and the long aging/lagering cycle required for producing ale and lager if you are going to advertise ale and lager on a menu. That way you will be honest with your customers by giving them what they believe they purchased. You can produce pseudo Ale and Lager by using brewers grade malt and the step mash method which adds time and cuts into profit margin.
In my opinion, wait ten years before jumping in head first and ankle deep. Spend the time on learning how to produce Ale and Lager and go from there because there may be the day when the hammer comes down on Prohibition style beer that was renamed Ale by CAMRA which is an advertising firm, and being sold as Ale when it isn't Ale. Mr. Pabst, Coors, and Miller are familiar with the type of beer most craftbrewers produce, and it isn't above them to use whatever means possible to eliminate competition. At this time, I believe there are three of four craftbrewers welcome in the big boys club, the rest, who knows what will happen with them. Suffragettes won't be used to eliminate competition, it may fall into laws regarding false advertising and that will be the end of it.
Since, you are a little bit away from making Ale and Lager to increase the quality of Prohibition beer, before adding hops bring the extract to boiling and as the hot break rises remove it and continue to remove it until the break ceases to form or at least drastically reduces, then add bittering hops and remove the second break as it forms. The wort will be a little bit cleaner and hops stick better to clean wort, less hops will be needed. Less goop will transfer to the primary fermenter.
To add body and mouthfeel boil some of the mash. Within malt is a type of heat resistant, complex starch called amylopectin it's the richest starch in malt. Contained in the starch are types of sugar called A and B limit dextrin. A and B limit dextrin are types of tasteless, nonfermenting sugar responsible for body and mouthfeel. When the boiling mash is added into the main mash Alpha releases limit dextrin during dextrinization. The starch being heat resistant, the temperatures used during infusion brewing aren't high enough to cause the starch to enter into solution before Alpha dentures and the starch ends up unused and left in the spent mash, paid for, but thrown away. The starch looks like small, white pieces. Without the starch beer thins during aging.
Long winded post, but you have been E Caveat Emptor'd.
Craft Brewer is an advertising slogan used to disguise quick and easy to produce, low quality, Prohibition style beer that homebrewers turned craftbrewers produce. Prohibition style beer was renamed Real Ale by CAMRA back in the early 1970's when Dave Line invented the homebrew industry and a BS story about Real Ale and how it is produced caused the homebrew empire to expand into craft brewing. The beverage became a hit with people who enjoy drinking ragged, imbalanced beer with excessive amounts of hops added to mask off flavors and deterioration inherent in Prohibition style beer. To each, his own.
The stories about Ale, the dreamed up styles of Ale such as saison, barnyard beer, NEIPA and the 100K recipes that go with the styles of Ale all written by the homebrew sales team at RDWHAHB Inc. set the hook. To set the hook deeper criteria was established for judging Prohibition style beer and during a contest awards are given for the best Ale and Lager to a brewer that never produced a drop of the beer. To figure out if beer is Ale or Lager all that a judge needs before tasting beer is the spec sheet for the malt that was used to make the beer and to ask the brewer if the beer was made by single temperature infusion. It makes it easy because when modern, fully modified malt makes the beer and single temperature infusion is the brewing method the beer isn't Ale or Lager it is Prohibition style beer.
Next time you are with the commercial homebrew guru's at the homebrew club ask them for the spec sheet for the malt they use and ask the HBS person for a spec sheet for the malt in stock. They probably won't know what you are talking about. A spec sheet comes with every bag of malt and it is used by the person interested in purchasing malt for determining if the malt is capable of producing Ale and Lager. A spec sheet exists because malt is very inconsistent and without a spec sheet there is absolutely, no way a recipe recommending to use a certain type of malt is accurate. When a recipe recommends purchasing 2 row pale malt, it is similar to asking a person to purchase a 2 door car. It's not a bad idea to become familiar with the acronyms, chemical names and numbers listed on a spec sheet, you'll need to know about the stuff before purchasing malt so you don't get screwed by a shyster malt salesman after you open the brewery.
There are two types of malt on the market and since you received training from homebrew books and follow homebrew recipes you are purchasing magical, fully modified, high protein malt that someone convinced you is capable of producing Ale by soaking the malt in hot water for an hour using one temperature which due to the make up of malt and how enzymes work on starch and sugar will not produce Ale and Lager. It is chemically and enzymatically impossible to produce Ale and Lager by soaking malt for an hour at one temperature.
There is under modified, low protein malt which is expensive and used for producing Ale and Lager and there is low cost, fully modified, high protein malt used for making whiskey, malt syrup, homebrew and most craftbrew. To make Ale and Lager with fully modified malt enzymes are added and a conversion rest is used along with secondary fermentation which for some reason is a no-no, never do, in homebrewing and I would think that the same technology moved into craft beer production. When modern, fully modified distillers grade malt is used instead of expensive brewers grade malt secondary fermentation isn't needed which increases profit margin and reduces the chance for the beer to oxidize or Gram-N bacteria from taking hold. Only primary fermentation vessels are required to make Prohibition style beer.
If the recipes that you are going to use in your new brewery recommends using fully modified malt, single temperature infusion, only primary fermentation and adding priming sugar or CO2 for carbonation the beer produced will be similar in quality to Prohibition style beer which is not close to the quality of authentic ale and lager.
You'll need to figure in the higher cost of brewers grade malt, the time and equipment involved with secondary fermentation and the long aging/lagering cycle required for producing ale and lager if you are going to advertise ale and lager on a menu. That way you will be honest with your customers by giving them what they believe they purchased. You can produce pseudo Ale and Lager by using brewers grade malt and the step mash method which adds time and cuts into profit margin.
In my opinion, wait ten years before jumping in head first and ankle deep. Spend the time on learning how to produce Ale and Lager and go from there because there may be the day when the hammer comes down on Prohibition style beer that was renamed Ale by CAMRA which is an advertising firm, and being sold as Ale when it isn't Ale. Mr. Pabst, Coors, and Miller are familiar with the type of beer most craftbrewers produce, and it isn't above them to use whatever means possible to eliminate competition. At this time, I believe there are three of four craftbrewers welcome in the big boys club, the rest, who knows what will happen with them. Suffragettes won't be used to eliminate competition, it may fall into laws regarding false advertising and that will be the end of it.
Since, you are a little bit away from making Ale and Lager to increase the quality of Prohibition beer, before adding hops bring the extract to boiling and as the hot break rises remove it and continue to remove it until the break ceases to form or at least drastically reduces, then add bittering hops and remove the second break as it forms. The wort will be a little bit cleaner and hops stick better to clean wort, less hops will be needed. Less goop will transfer to the primary fermenter.
To add body and mouthfeel boil some of the mash. Within malt is a type of heat resistant, complex starch called amylopectin it's the richest starch in malt. Contained in the starch are types of sugar called A and B limit dextrin. A and B limit dextrin are types of tasteless, nonfermenting sugar responsible for body and mouthfeel. When the boiling mash is added into the main mash Alpha releases limit dextrin during dextrinization. The starch being heat resistant, the temperatures used during infusion brewing aren't high enough to cause the starch to enter into solution before Alpha dentures and the starch ends up unused and left in the spent mash, paid for, but thrown away. The starch looks like small, white pieces. Without the starch beer thins during aging.
Long winded post, but you have been E Caveat Emptor'd.
danielthemaniel
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Most have said something similar but I think a brewery would benefit from a narrowed focus of great beers as opposed to a wide focus of good beers. I've never decided to go back to a brewery because their beers were "sufficient." My 2 cents would be:
1. Hoppy
2. Light
3. Dark
4. Seasonal/trendy
Expand from there when you're ready. You're beer quality drives more sales than your variety will.
1. Hoppy
2. Light
3. Dark
4. Seasonal/trendy
Expand from there when you're ready. You're beer quality drives more sales than your variety will.
Communal mash tun and boil i think is all since each "company" has their own fermenter and brite tank. It's a 7 barrel system so it's still a small scale compared to big companies. If i did take the leap it would be a second job and the fiance would do the business and footwork to get the beer distributed. It's all in the dreaming stage right now, i was curious what people here thought would be good for planning.
papz
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A lot of places start out with a 7-Barrel system and run with it a year or two before expanding. Expansion, usually happens to the fermenters first. Often, they will either do a double batch to fill up a 15-Bbl tank from a 7-Bbl system or do the second batch within a few days of the first. Those that actually do expand are places that are distributing all over the state and are trying to get into other states. Even at 7-Bbl, that's enough to supply several people with a regular paycheck assuming that there is a demand for your product.
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I browse these forums daily. And this guy keeps chiming in with this “you all are producing prohibition style beer”. And you can’t make “Ale or Lager” because “you don’t understand the malt analysis sheet” and you need to spend $1500 on each individual brewing textbook (which we are probably all too “pre-prohibition minded” to truly understand, let alone have the skills or equipment to make “Ale or Lager”). And then he goes on about enzymes and proteins and malt modification that mostly goes against all of the collective brewing knowledge on this site and from highly respected authorities in the field (he also cites no sources, I guess that stuff is all in the textbooks we are not paying $1500 dollars for?). Seriously, there are thousands of people on this site producing “real Ale and Lager” and I am willing to bet that there are a number of them doing it much better than you or I can currently do. I am by no means a beginner, but I still have a desire to learn everything I can from others who may have more experience than me. I see you throwing out a bunch of long winded posts that go against conventional wisdom/science. So you can cite some sources so we can all do our own research and better the community and spread the knowledge and good beer/camaraderie/real Ale and Lager. I think you spread a lot of misinformation and frankly I’m a little tired of seeing it pop up. By the way, this isn’t just a hobby for me. I also do it professionally and am able to support my family. Even though I don’t make “real” Ales and Lagers...
Either a troll, a wingnut, or a bot.
I've been thinking it's a bot. Every post is essentially the same, only the sentences are slightly rearranged.
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Probably a scam for $1500 books. Never heard of such nonsense.
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Yeah he almost makes some of these LODO guys seem huggable. (No offense LODO brewers, I definitely think there is merit to the LODO approach but some of you tend to come off as cultish sometimes so I have to tease you a bit).
tennesseean_87
Well-Known Member
Lighten up, guys. It's hilarious! I bet it's Yooper or Revvy or someone having a laugh.
Whomever, or whatever, Hopalong is, he/she/it hasn't been back since the day these comments started. According to its profile page it hasn't logged in since 9/21.
Well now that's over, thanks again to the people who gave helpful responses. The question was both to help me personally to have a standard goal to have written down to go for and it was also to see in general what variety people feel a brewery needs to be producing. I stated from the very beginning that i knew that I'm not ready to do anything yet but looking to have a target to go after. If that goal was something like ten beers vs five or fifteen, those all create a different workload and pathways to the end goal of becoming a professional. Yes i know right now it's a longshot of even happening but i don't need random people on here telling me I'm stupid for having a dream and a goal so i ask for input...
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Nothing wrong with dreaming or goals, and yours is attainable if that becomes your intention..
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