Brewery piggybacking

[jack_a_roe]

It was brought up the other day that Ipswich Brewing, MA, brews a couple other people's beer for them. How exactly does that work? Do the other brewers need anything other than a business license n whatnot? Essentially they probably don't need any of the craziness in terms of brewing permits and that sorta stuff right? One would think, they are just repackaging someone else's beer who has all of that stuff taken care of already.

Also, I wonder how they go about compensation for such things. Perentage of sales? Flat rate paying for time, space etc? It would make tons of sense to start out this way, as long as you can find someone with adequate down time to accommodate your extra brew days.

 

[Auger]

Do some research on contract brewing. Agreements can range from "give us your recipe and a label, we will buy everything, brew it, package it and distribute it, here's your bill" to "here are the keys to our brewery for the day, do your thing and clean up when you're done, and put the rent check in the mail" and everywhere in between. I would assume that compensation would largely depend on amount of support required.

 

[Auger]

It would make tons of sense to start out this way, as long as you can find someone with adequate down time to accommodate your extra brew days.

2 Roads in CT does this. They are a relatively new brewery (2, maybe 3 years old?) and they have a huge facility. Of what they brew, I believe only about 20% is under the 2 Roads label. The rest of their capacity is used to brew other labels' beer. It is a nice strategy if you can afford it because as their own label's demand increases and they require more capacity, they can just phase out some of their contract customers and use the capacity for their own beer.

 

[Calichusetts]

There is another one in mass doing this as well. If I recall, it was a flat rate + ingredients. You had to brew it, they would do the rest. It was out of Westport and is now Buzzards Bay Brewery.

Pretty Things uses them:

http://www.prettythingsbeertoday.com/wp/our-story/what-in-the-world/