Setsumi
Well-Known Member
There is a thread here titled, "I don't want to open a brewery (maybe you shouldn't either)". Boy you sure proof them wrong. Good luck.
Gilded Goat Brewing Co. - Building a Brewery
- Thread starter ColoHox
- Start date
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
Thanks Muddy. The nerves are building right along with our walls.
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
Thank you! Yes, 7bbl brewhouse with a 10bbl mash tun...extra room for high gravity beers. That space behind the Cooler/Tax area is my brother's liquor store, ie. our first distribution client!
I didn't include our other drawings, but since someone asked in a PM, I'll explain a bit. We have an additional 1500sqft of basement space directly beneath our brewhouse. We will build another cooler in this area (and run tap lines up to the bar) and use it for barrel storage. We are in negotiations for the rest of the basement space as well, (~2500 sqft, I think), for storage of many, many oak barrels. Directly to the south of our brewhouse is additional space for expansion. It is in the middle of this building, and probably not really lease-able for anyone but us. Still chipping away at the price/sqft.
Yeah, I've contributed to that thread. I agree, that there are too many brewers trying to sell mediocre beer, and that gives the whole industry a bad name. However, (taking the author's advice) planning your venture and finding the right people will help tremendously. Just charging out and trying to open a <3bbl sole proprietorship with a limited budget sounds like absolute torture to me, so I agree with some of his statements.
MuddyCreek
Well-Known Member
Ya, that'll happen. It will get better.
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
Progress! They've finally started demolition on the exterior of the building. The front face of the building is being moved towards the photographer by about 20ft from where it is now.
Here is a quick render of what the front of our space will look like.
We are still working on some of the details for the front facade, but this render is close. I don't know if we will use the entrance arch either...$$.
Here is a quick render of what the front of our space will look like.
We are still working on some of the details for the front facade, but this render is close. I don't know if we will use the entrance arch either...$$.
BentBrewer
Well-Known Member
That entrance arch is an awfully nice touch. If you can't afford it at the start, I'd make sure it's in the plans for year two.
Edit: Maybe make it a touch bigger, so the diameter of the circle matches the curve of the arch. My 2 cents.
Edit: Maybe make it a touch bigger, so the diameter of the circle matches the curve of the arch. My 2 cents.
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I second the arch. Very nicely conceived!
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
That entrance arch is an awfully nice touch. If you can't afford it at the start, I'd make sure it's in the plans for year two.
Edit: Maybe make it a touch bigger, so the diameter of the circle matches the curve of the arch. My 2 cents.
Thanks! I like it a lot. We definitely have to get curve right. We are trying to find someone to make this for us, instead of using our GC or one of his Subcontractors. I think the landlord's people will be doing the columns and arch since they are a part of the overall building design, but we can have the circular logo bit made.
In case anyone reading has any experience with something like this...would we plasma cut plate steel, then powder coat it? What gauge steel?
BentBrewer
Well-Known Member
It all depends on what you want. You could do that, and you'd have a wide choice of colors with powder coat.
OR... You could plasma cut it from stainless, and then run either a regular or random pattern on it with a grinder and a sanding pad. I wouldn't polish it, as there will be times of day that it's reflecting somewhere unwanted. You could also put a gold clear coat on it so it's a metallic gold.
OR... You could do it in mild steel, and patina it with vinegar (rust) or use one of the various patina washes for various dark browns/blacks, etc.
OR... cut it from copper or brass, and patina similarly.
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
Excellent suggestions, thanks! Any idea if this would be something that a metal fab shop (or something similar) would normally do? Or maybe get the particular metal cut then add a patina ourselves? We have seen some amazing things done with a patina on copper or brass, and it would keep with our gilded theme.
BentBrewer
Well-Known Member
My guess, (and that's all it is) would be that most fab shops wouldn't want to do the patina. Since they wouldn't be set up with a wet area, and since they'd probably have no experience with the effect on the steel, they'd be hesitant. I'd still ask though.
If you have any sort of a large metal supply house, they might know of a metalworking artist that's familiar with doing patina work. I'd also try asking the Rocky Mountain Smiths, and see if anyone knows anyone with some experience in that area.
If you have any sort of a large metal supply house, they might know of a metalworking artist that's familiar with doing patina work. I'd also try asking the Rocky Mountain Smiths, and see if anyone knows anyone with some experience in that area.
bradleyhunt
Well-Known Member
High School FFA Ag Mechanics class. Those kids are always cutting and making stuff out of steel. Not advocating a 16 year old make your piece, but those kids can do some awesome stuff. Kid I went to high school with made 3D steel roses.
Auger
Well-Known Member
Yes, this or a college manufacturing/mechanical engineering department. The MEs I went to college with had access to all sorts of cool equipment - miling, lathe, even a waterjet, and were able to use it for whatever. Might be able to get away with just the cost of material (plus some beer?) and build some goodwill in the process.
A guy I went to high school with is a welding instructor at front range community college and does a lot of welding/metal art. Not sure if he would be interested in the project but I can probably get you his contact info if interested. Might at least be able to point you in the right direction locally.
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
Making the jump, technically. I was (am) very aware that it is not an easy jump, so for the past year, I have been brewing with many of the other local breweries. Last week I did a double batch with a brewery in Denver that is using the same equipment that we purchased. In two weeks, a brewery in CO Springs is commissioning a brewhouse in almost our exact same configuration and I will be spending a lot of time with them. Our equipment manufacturer (Alpha Brewing Ops) sends a few people out with the equipment for commissioning and training on the brewhouse, which will occur in July. We have also hired a brewery consultant who has been brewing professionally for 20 years and has helped start up at least 10 other breweries in the past few years. He will be helping us learn the equipment and helping with brewing our first few batches. Two things were very apparent...that commercial brewing is not just homebrewing on a larger scale, and that the brewers in this area are some of the most helpful and open people I have ever met. Cheers to them!
That would be great! Which campus does he work out of? Send me a PM.
MuddyCreek
Well-Known Member
This is really important!
Those ridiculously amazing IPA's you guys all make at home - Ya. Those don't always translate well to 10 bbl batches. That takes a LOT of work and dedication. There's a reason IPA's are the full on rock-stars of the festival world.
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
A huge day for GGBC! We received our state licenses in record time...30 days! This includes a state manufacturing license and a wholesaler license. It took another brewery in the area 9 months to get state approval...for some unknown reason.
The agents at the Dept of Revenue here in CO were so easy to work with. A few weeks ago, we brought our application over personally, instead of mailing it. While we were there, one of the agents asked if we would mind going through the application with him. We were shocked, but of course agreed. He pointed out a few errors in the application but said he would hold on to them, that we just needed to send him some documents describing the amendments we were making. For example, the tenant (us) in the lease is Gilded Goat Brewing Co, however the corporate structure that is doing business as GGBC is Aztech. We had to send a memo to the agent, signed by our landlord, stating the discrepancy and resolving it.
The big hurdle we have yet to clear is the Federal TTB brewing license...aka Brewer's Notice. We are at 45 days since the application packet was received. We still need to be assigned to a specialist, and at that point, the turnaround could be fast (with some help from our state representatives and senator), or painfully slow. The average processing time is currently about 160 days...from the date you are assigned a specialist. We still have quite a while on that one.
One very large step closer to brewing!
The agents at the Dept of Revenue here in CO were so easy to work with. A few weeks ago, we brought our application over personally, instead of mailing it. While we were there, one of the agents asked if we would mind going through the application with him. We were shocked, but of course agreed. He pointed out a few errors in the application but said he would hold on to them, that we just needed to send him some documents describing the amendments we were making. For example, the tenant (us) in the lease is Gilded Goat Brewing Co, however the corporate structure that is doing business as GGBC is Aztech. We had to send a memo to the agent, signed by our landlord, stating the discrepancy and resolving it.
The big hurdle we have yet to clear is the Federal TTB brewing license...aka Brewer's Notice. We are at 45 days since the application packet was received. We still need to be assigned to a specialist, and at that point, the turnaround could be fast (with some help from our state representatives and senator), or painfully slow. The average processing time is currently about 160 days...from the date you are assigned a specialist. We still have quite a while on that one.
One very large step closer to brewing!
thunderwagn
Well-Known Member
Congrats! 
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Woo-Hoo! Congrats!
I would try to do it first. Nothing is better than creating something yourself.
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
I ran your suggestion by the group. They thought it might be too messy if people were putting their feet in full pint glasses.
lupulinaddict
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I was curious what the larger scaled recipe does compared to the homebrew size? Are you having to adjust hop amounts, hop addition times, or grain bill? Have you found a modification that works best for you?
Colohox....
what have you found to be the biggest difference so far from going from homebrewer to probrewer as you helped out at the local breweries?
Good luck to both of you!
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
I don't know if you are asking specifically about brewing issues, or just in general, but prepare for a wall 'o text. Every brewery has a different approach to their brewing and their business. I have accumulated a "global" view of the process, after spending time with various people that links together the various moving parts, taking things I liked from particular places.
A production brewer must adjust every one of the things you mentioned. Large scale brewing has higher hop utilization overall and often vastly decreased amounts of roasted malts, for example. We will be dealing with up scaling recipes when our equipment arrives in June. Many issues are equipment specific as well but this is just a small piece of the puzzle. Making good beer isn't even close to enough if you want a successful brewery.
I think my biggest take away, which probably has the most to do with my personality, is the amount of planning that should go into production level brewing. There are so many moving parts involved in keeping your brewery machine running. If you follow the process from raw materials to pint glass, every step along the way needs to be planned for and adjusted, if necessary. A local brewery ran out of beer after being open 3 weeks. That kind of stuff drives me crazy! Of course, many things could come up that no one thought about, but how hard is it to look at your taproom volumes, production schedule, and raw material orders? I understand that you can't force a beer to ferment faster or that maybe there were an average of 100 people in the taproom on Fri/Sat peak times and you were only expecting an average of 80, or you ran out of your secret hop...these things happen. Successful breweries need to be able to monitor things like this before they start pouring beer. I have the perspective that (s)he who has the most data wins!
To this end, we created a pretty thorough taproom demand forecast. This forecast estimates the number of people in the taproom per hour/day/week, how much they are drinking, how long they are staying, etc. These numbers tell us how much beer we need to be producing to meet the demand. Of course, these are estimates. We will adjust these numbers as we accumulate hard data. Our prediction for Tuesdays (a notoriously slow brewery day, unless special events are planned to bring people in) is that we will serve about 100 people during the 6 hours that we are open, which is an average of 13% of our capacity over the 6 hours. We expect 200-16 oz pours, or 3200 oz to be served during this time. These numbers are then fed into our revenue model. As we get hard data for people/day and oz. served, these numbers will automatically adjust the other dependent aspects of our demand model and revenue model, providing alerts when we hit the minimum number of pints sold/day depending on the average expected capacity that day, or when we didn't. These numbers will accumulate until we know what we need to sell per day and per week, on average, to be in the black (used very loosely here), or if we need to do something on slow days to boost our sales. Friday and Saturday, we expect to sell about 14,000 oz over the two days, which is using an estimate of an average of 28% capacity. If we are actually at 70% capacity over these two days, which would be awesome, we instantly know that we need to increase supply.
If we have 2 weekends in a row that we are at 100% capacity for longer than we estimated (from 2pm to 8pm, instead of 3pm to 5pm for example), we may run into trouble, but the fact that we are actively monitoring these things and have models in place to help us predict or forecast how these changes will affect us will help in every stage. Those two weekends of higher capacity will trigger a new malt order sooner than normal. The peaks and troughs in our data will smooth out over time as well.
I was asking another brewer/owner about his business recently and he had no idea how many pints he was selling per week. Not that he didn't just know of the top of his head, they weren't keeping track.
Maybe that is the actual take away...the jump from homebrewing to commercial brewing isn't about making larger volumes of good beer and adjusting your recipes, it's about keeping track of the BUSINESS of your beer. People complain that opening a brewery would ruin the hobby for them, and they are right, but not just because it's more work or that you are doing it more often: You are now running a business, it is no longer a hobby.
If you were actually asking about the differences related to brewing, then I'm sorry to put you through all of that. I know that homebrewers (probably) don't monitor their pints consumed per week to decide if they will brew again. I'll happily talk about brewing issues as well. I just wanted to point out what, for me anyway, required the greatest amount of effort regarding the operation of the business itself.
Plus, you gotta factor in how many snarky dumb@sses like me are gonna show up looking for something that is steel toed for work, also provides arch support, but wont break the bank.
Impressed by the in depth research. Definitely more than most breweries try to plan ahead. I think most just open, constantly run out of favorites, then find their groove.
Do you think the amount of people there will be more fluctuating and unpredictable when you first open? I would think the first month could be unusually busy if you advertised well and stuff. Dont worry, ive been taking care of sending out ads under what Im calling your "heritage" name
I live right in the middle of a quaint downtown "arts district" area, right next to a brewery. Festivals, shows, parades, and other events have a huge impact on them. I go in there some fridays and its like crickets. I get to chat a lot with the brewers though, which is nice. Then others, its so packed I just prefer to drink my pint in the back where they brew and hide out there. I'm guessing you guys will be one of the breweries that's friendly to homebrewers.
Impressed by the in depth research. Definitely more than most breweries try to plan ahead. I think most just open, constantly run out of favorites, then find their groove.
Do you think the amount of people there will be more fluctuating and unpredictable when you first open? I would think the first month could be unusually busy if you advertised well and stuff. Dont worry, ive been taking care of sending out ads under what Im calling your "heritage" name
I live right in the middle of a quaint downtown "arts district" area, right next to a brewery. Festivals, shows, parades, and other events have a huge impact on them. I go in there some fridays and its like crickets. I get to chat a lot with the brewers though, which is nice. Then others, its so packed I just prefer to drink my pint in the back where they brew and hide out there. I'm guessing you guys will be one of the breweries that's friendly to homebrewers.
Boleslaus
Well-Known Member
Subscribed. I think many of us share a secret dream to one day make it in the beer industry. I know I do. It sounds like you and I also share a love (read: obsession) for organization and planning. Honestly, to me the entrepreneurial and business planning part sounds just as interesting as the brewing.
For the time being I'll live and suffer vicariously through you. Keep up the good work!
For the time being I'll live and suffer vicariously through you. Keep up the good work!
MuddyCreek
Well-Known Member
Uh... Then there's the feds to consider. They sort of take exception when you don't know how many pints you're selling... Kind of a tax thing and all that.
OP
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
You? Snarky? Naah. I can appreciate that new breweries have to find their groove. We will too. Along the way though we are measuring, monitoring, counting, and adjusting. There isn't any of the "let's just wing it" approach for us. And yes, absolutely, the traffic in the first month or two is probably not a good estimation of regular, average traffic. We will have to account for the "grand opening" rush and things like that. Our models will get better at prediction as we go, and I can't wait to outperform the model (power of positive thinking!).
We will be friendly to everyone, of course. There is a fine line between beer-enthusiast and beer-dbag, but I think it is great (and challenging) to go from introducing a newcomer to the different styles and skimming the surface of the process, all the way to an in-depth chat about brewhouse efficiency and shelf stability. Every customer needs a different level of attention to feel comfortable and satisfied in your brewery.
Thanks! We couldn't have made it this far without the team of incredibly knowledgeable and helpful people we have around us...and much more to come.
OP
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
True. He dismissed my question a bit, saying that their POS platform keeps track and they use that for the brewers report forms, so their paperwork is probably okay, I am assuming.
I was mostly asking about revenue and hitting weekly numbers (or if they even have benchmarks like that), not really production. They have a different style of business over there...different strokes.
MaryB
Well-Known Member
One you get going you could also offer 2-3? day brew classes where a very small group comes in and works for you following your brewmasters suggestions to see what operating a commercial brewery is like.
I don't know if you are asking specifically about brewing issues, or just in general, but prepare for a wall 'o text. Every brewery has a different approach to their brewing and their business. I have accumulated a "global" view of the process, after spending time with various people that links together the various moving parts, taking things I liked from particular places.
A production brewer must adjust every one of the things you mentioned. Large scale brewing has higher hop utilization overall and often vastly decreased amounts of roasted malts, for example. We will be dealing with up scaling recipes when our equipment arrives in June. Many issues are equipment specific as well but this is just a small piece of the puzzle. Making good beer isn't even close to enough if you want a successful brewery.
I think my biggest take away, which probably has the most to do with my personality, is the amount of planning that should go into production level brewing. There are so many moving parts involved in keeping your brewery machine running. If you follow the process from raw materials to pint glass, every step along the way needs to be planned for and adjusted, if necessary. A local brewery ran out of beer after being open 3 weeks. That kind of stuff drives me crazy! Of course, many things could come up that no one thought about, but how hard is it to look at your taproom volumes, production schedule, and raw material orders? I understand that you can't force a beer to ferment faster or that maybe there were an average of 100 people in the taproom on Fri/Sat peak times and you were only expecting an average of 80, or you ran out of your secret hop...these things happen. Successful breweries need to be able to monitor things like this before they start pouring beer. I have the perspective that (s)he who has the most data wins!
To this end, we created a pretty thorough taproom demand forecast. This forecast estimates the number of people in the taproom per hour/day/week, how much they are drinking, how long they are staying, etc. These numbers tell us how much beer we need to be producing to meet the demand. Of course, these are estimates. We will adjust these numbers as we accumulate hard data. Our prediction for Tuesdays (a notoriously slow brewery day, unless special events are planned to bring people in) is that we will serve about 100 people during the 6 hours that we are open, which is an average of 13% of our capacity over the 6 hours. We expect 200-16 oz pours, or 3200 oz to be served during this time. These numbers are then fed into our revenue model. As we get hard data for people/day and oz. served, these numbers will automatically adjust the other dependent aspects of our demand model and revenue model, providing alerts when we hit the minimum number of pints sold/day depending on the average expected capacity that day, or when we didn't. These numbers will accumulate until we know what we need to sell per day and per week, on average, to be in the black (used very loosely here), or if we need to do something on slow days to boost our sales. Friday and Saturday, we expect to sell about 14,000 oz over the two days, which is using an estimate of an average of 28% capacity. If we are actually at 70% capacity over these two days, which would be awesome, we instantly know that we need to increase supply.
If we have 2 weekends in a row that we are at 100% capacity for longer than we estimated (from 2pm to 8pm, instead of 3pm to 5pm for example), we may run into trouble, but the fact that we are actively monitoring these things and have models in place to help us predict or forecast how these changes will affect us will help in every stage. Those two weekends of higher capacity will trigger a new malt order sooner than normal. The peaks and troughs in our data will smooth out over time as well.
I was asking another brewer/owner about his business recently and he had no idea how many pints he was selling per week. Not that he didn't just know of the top of his head, they weren't keeping track.
Maybe that is the actual take away...the jump from homebrewing to commercial brewing isn't about making larger volumes of good beer and adjusting your recipes, it's about keeping track of the BUSINESS of your beer. People complain that opening a brewery would ruin the hobby for them, and they are right, but not just because it's more work or that you are doing it more often: You are now running a business, it is no longer a hobby.
If you were actually asking about the differences related to brewing, then I'm sorry to put you through all of that. I know that homebrewers (probably) don't monitor their pints consumed per week to decide if they will brew again. I'll happily talk about brewing issues as well. I just wanted to point out what, for me anyway, required the greatest amount of effort regarding the operation of the business itself.
As a new brewery. Don't do this. Focus on your business and getting going. It's a heck of a lot of work and you need to be focused on that.
MaryB
Well-Known Member
I said ONCE YOU GET GOING! It would be an added revenue stream to offer classes!
OP
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
You both bring up good points. Once we have some sort of operational consistency, we will be offering classes.
A few of us in the group have a lot of teaching experience. We would really like to offer classes of varying depth, if there is interest. Anywhere from basic brewing to complex brewing science. We have set aside funding for 6 part-time, temporary internship positions as well. Colorado State University recently started a fermentation science major and we would love to be able to give some of those students/graduates some hands on experience. We will also need to make sure we don't have any liability issues with having non-employees participating in the brewing process, if we choose to have a class that offers hands-on participation.
Auger
Well-Known Member
If you're developing a relationship with a nearly university, also look into the marketing department, either at the undergrad or graduate level. A lot of schools are trying to work real-world experience into the curriculums, so its a chance to build on that relationship and also possibly get some free advice and exposure.
OP
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
You nailed it. We are currently using computer information science (CIS) students to build a database and UI to help us manage inventory, brewing parameters, and quality metrics on a per batch basis, which will be searchable by recipe, batch #, etc and produce reports by recipe/batch/raw material lot, etc. The database will also interface with our brewing control panel and automatically collate brewday data. I am really looking forward to working with their database. It's easy to collect the data, but you need to make sense of it in order to use it.
Interior design students have helped with our design schemes and marketing students will help with...marketing. My whole family are CSU alum, so we are looking to involve the university in any way we can.
Murphys_Law
Well-Known Member
I'm just down in Broomfield and would line to make the trip up to see you guys when you're ready!
OP
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ColoHox
Compulsive Hand Washer
Yes! Do it. That goes for everyone else here on HBT as well. There isn't much to see now, mostly dirt and concrete, but if anyone wants to meet and have a look around our space as we build out, I'm more than happy to do so. After we are open, I'd love to show you guys around the brewhouse and lab.
Any idea how that works for beer used on site for cooking? We watch TV cooking shows and seems like a big trend these days to cook with the beer made on site. I can't imagine it being fun to pay taxes on that since it would be like paying taxes on a spice used for seasoning.
