Books About Starting A Brewery

[therainmaker]

I'm interested in doing some reading on starting a brewery. I see a few books online about this from Brewers Association (Starting Your Own Brewery, etc) and figured before paying for a new one I'd see if anyone had some used.

Cheers!

 

[JLeuch]

The real question is when can your hobby become your career? is it when you make a solid base recipe or a solid setup or do you just do it?

 

[Takuie]

The biggest ingredient you will need is money, lots of it. Secondly, read anything and everything that has anything to do with starting your own brewery. The few books I have read, none of them mentioned it could take up to a year to get all permits. That is one year of operating expenses with zero cash flow. Found that out by talking with a few brewery owners in my local area.

You can also check out contract brewing to help you get off the ground first. The rules and regulations are very overwhelming, don't let it discourage you. Eat that elephant one bite at a time.

 

[Wayne1]

Brewery Operations Manual

This is a great buy for $20.00. Tom Hennessy is a serial brewery owner and operator. He has run a brewery immersion course out of his Colorado Boy brewery for many years that teaches you how to start up and run a small brewery.

The book is great on showing you alternatives in site selection and very, very good on day to day operations of the business side of a brewery. I do not agree with the equipment side of things, but it is a viable way to go.

The Brewers Guide to Starting Your own Brewery is available from the BA for $95.00, or $60.00 from Amazon. This guide is excellent in it's overview of start-up and Dick Cantwell has been around for a very long time, owner of Elysian Brewing in Seattle. He provides a template for costs of start-up and operations and the business plan he used to get Elysian up and running.

Those two books will give you ideas to help start planning a start-up. I would also suggest joining the BA as a brewery in planning. There are many features on their website to help members. These are very minor costs associated with getting a brewery off the ground.

Good luck!

 

[therainmaker]

The Brewers Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery was what I was planning on checking out. Really want to try to read up, have a few chances to gypsy brew at some local breweries then see what I think from there

 

[BlkWater_brewer]

That is a pretty good book, but......... Before you dive in from that side of brewing, check out local and state/federal regulations, licensing, permits, commercial building codes. Not sure of your state, but I'm in the woods in NH and between local zoning, building codes and permits, then required state and federal permits and licenses it's not like just putting equipment in your garage/barn and you have a brewery. If the requirements don't scare you away then good luck.