So you’ve been brewing beer for a few years and love sharing your brews with your family, friends, neighbors, and plumber? You figure, why not share my hard work with the rest of the world, and make money while working my dream job? Many others have had the same idea. A lot of the craft breweries that you know and love today, started with a passion for home brewing. You may be familiar with some of the larger success stories (Sam Adams or Dogfish Head) but you never hear about the breweries that failed to succeed. This is my (much shortened) story of failing to launch a brewery in Toledo, OH in 2014.
Marriage is a beautiful thing isn’t it? Not when it takes you 16 hours to reach a small island off the coast of Belize. That’s where the planning of my brewery began. I had a jet lagged wife, and a lot of spare time. Besides the 2 planes, 2 taxis, and 2 ferries it took to get to this island, the wedding was pretty exhausting too. Did I mention this was my honeymoon? While my wife napped, I was curiously looking at the prices of commercial brewing systems to see it was feasible to build a brewery. They ranged from 1-7 bbl’s (barrels) and cost $10k-$90k depending on the design, aesthetics, and degree of automation. If you’re unfamiliar, 1bbl is 31 gallons. It only took a couple days for me to convince myself that I needed to open a small brewery. Besides worrying about the cost, I was also wondering where I would put all of this equipment.
Brewing on a small system would not yield very much beer for sale, so I would have to keep costs low for my brewery. I also wanted to keep my full time job as a Product Development Engineer (I like money), so I could only manage brewing about once a week. Finally, it would help if the brewery was close to my house to reduce travel. One place did meet all of those requirements and it’s all too obvious. I decided to build the brewery in the basement of my house. It was temperate all year round, spacious, and added no significant cost. Funny enough, I saw during my research that another person near Toledo was converting their home garage into a commercial brewery just a few miles away from my house. If they could do it, why couldn’t I? The next few months were daily struggles of trying to reach contractors, electricians, state/federal officials, brewing equipment companies, ingredient suppliers, distributors, and piecing together the puzzle known as starting a brewery. It is a puzzle. It was at that time that I also brought my friend Jon on board to help, despite the fact that he lived 2.5 hours away in Columbus, OH.
In between work, my personal life, and planning my brewery build, I still needed to work out the logistics of my essentially one man company. I got lucky when my local homebrew shop, Titgemeier’s, was willing to give me discounts on all of my ingredients and equipment. They offered just to support Toledo’s growing craft beer scene! When I talked directly to grain, hops, and yeast suppliers about buying commercially, they were all willing but my small quantities made it too expensive. So a local shop that I could visit on a weekly basis for orders and pickups was perfect.
During my research phase, I visited about 12 restaurants and bars to see if they would be interested in buying beer from my soon to be local brewery. I was stunned when every single manager said yes. A few of them were even more excited than I was because the local beer selection was so limited. I remember one of the restaurants asked if they could pay a premium for same day deliveries. They consistently had empty taps and had to wait until their distributor dropped off weekly shipments. Empty taps don’t help anybody! Another restaurant happened to only serve beer in bottles, but asked us to figure out a way to integrate our kegs into their bar. Now that’s willingness.
After talking to a distributor, we both agreed that I was too small for either party to make money. So I planned on hand delivering all of the kegs to the bars by myself. Thankfully, the most requested keg size was a 1/6bbl. This was preferable so I could easily lift the small kegs into my car for deliveries. I had chosen kegs instead bottles for simplicity. Bottles are labor intensive. You have to keep ordering bottles, caps, labels, and boxes. Then you have to apply caps and labels to each bottle. If you choose to bottle condition then you have to store bottles in your limited brewery space and they take longer until they’re ready. Kegs seemed like the better option as they could be reused over and over.
There are a ton of people you have to talk to when trying to open a brewery, and they all have different goals. Some examples are the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, and Health Department. Some of the early paperwork required a name for the brewery and Jon and I had trouble agreeing on a name. We decided that even a cool name could be made lame if the logo was corny. So we enlisted the help of a local graphic designer to help us create some logos for a short list of names. We finally agreed on the name and logo you see to the right.
However, after talking to those entities, I found that nobody had any major issues with me opening a brewery in my basement. They all requested certain things to meet their codes, but nothing was unreasonable. For instance, they wanted a 3 basin sink so I could clean, sanitize, and rinse equipment separately. Another request was to have all non-porous surfaces on the walls and floor by using paint or plastic boards. This was easy. Why was nobody else selling beer from their basement? Maybe I was just a pioneer. Then a seemingly reasonable request caused some problems. I was asked to separate the brewery portion of my basement from my personal home by putting up walls and having a door that locked from inside the brewery. That didn’t seem so bad, but the caveat was they wouldn’t allow the door between the brewery and my personal basement to be the main point of access. I would need to add an extra door to my basement which was completely underground. So I called out a contractor and got a quote for installing the extra door. It was going to be $6,000! Even worse, I was now starting to play with another $160k investment known as my home. Just to be clear, I hadn’t built or bought anything at this point. I was still in the planning stages so I was able to shift directions easily.
With the basement out of the question, I turned to my 2.5 car garage. The extra 0.5 was at the back of the garage and just held lawn equipment and tools. Although tiny, I did a quick layout and realized I could squeeze all of my equipment in there. Planning resumed and everything was going well. At the final stages of planning I was told to contact the local Building Department. After talking to them I realized I was not going to be (legally) brewing commercial beer out of my home at all. My neighborhood’s zoning did not allow for any type of retail business. No matter how small or quiet. The only exception would be if retail was an accessory to the main business. Such as a piano teacher who sells sheet music to their students. The main purpose of their business isn’t to sell sheet music, but it’s allowed since it’s an accessory to giving piano lessons. Either way, I needed to find another place to brew my beer.
I looked at several commercially zoned buildings but they all had the same problem. They cost money. The rental property would cancel out almost all of my profit since my operation was so small. The cheapest location was a 400 square feet suite, but it turned out that the zoning was still incorrect for a brewery. To afford a decent property, I would have to get a bigger system or brew more often. However, this would take more money and more time to distribute more beer. Brewing would have to become my full time job and I wasn’t ready to take a substantial pay cut to make that happen. I had one last idea, but wasn’t sure if it was even a reasonable thing to ask of a friend.
My favorite local bar had a young, charismatic owner that had built a cult following of craft beer lovers since he took ownership. The bar was simply called The Local. After pitching my idea to convert his tiny unused kitchen into a craft brewery, he agreed as long as nothing would disrupt his bar. The best part was the bar was located in Holland, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the same officials that I had formed a grudge against in Toledo. They were just doing their jobs but they were killing my dream! Unfortunately, this attempt was short lived. The company that owned the building didn’t see an advantage to separating the bar from the kitchen as required by state regulation. Since two separate companies can’t live under one roof/address. I would have done the construction to seal off the one connecting doorway, but splitting the lease was too difficult for them. After all, paperwork is hard. There’s a computer and a printer and then somebody needs a pen. It’s a whole ordeal. We would also be violating what’s called the Tied House Act. You can read the description of this violation in the picture below. After six months of anxiously planning, my dream was dead.
Remember that other guy I mentioned that was converting his garage into a brewery? Even though he only lived a few miles from me, the regulations in his city were different. He was able to successfully launch his brewery that year. When I ran into him at our local homebrew shop a few months later, he said he could not keep up with demand and was already debating a larger setup and facility. After just 3 months of being in business! More recently I saw that he has signed a lease to move into a new location where he can continue to grow. Jealousy aside, I’m glad he was able to make his garage brewery a reality. It makes me feel a little less crazy for trying the same thing unsuccessfully. But what do you expect? When you’re passionate about something it tends to make you a little crazy. Toledo was slow to catch onto the craft beer scene, but since my failed attempt(s) 20 months ago, 3 new breweries have opened and 2 more are currently being built. All 5 of those breweries have stemmed (in one way or another) from the Toledo homebrew club known as the Glass City Mashers. The itch is obviously there, but who’s crazy enough to scratch it?
Scratching the Itch to Start a Pro Brewery
Marriage is a beautiful thing isn’t it? Not when it takes you 16 hours to reach a small island off the coast of Belize. That’s where the planning of my brewery began. I had a jet lagged wife, and a lot of spare time. Besides the 2 planes, 2 taxis, and 2 ferries it took to get to this island, the wedding was pretty exhausting too. Did I mention this was my honeymoon? While my wife napped, I was curiously looking at the prices of commercial brewing systems to see it was feasible to build a brewery. They ranged from 1-7 bbl’s (barrels) and cost $10k-$90k depending on the design, aesthetics, and degree of automation. If you’re unfamiliar, 1bbl is 31 gallons. It only took a couple days for me to convince myself that I needed to open a small brewery. Besides worrying about the cost, I was also wondering where I would put all of this equipment.
Brewing on a small system would not yield very much beer for sale, so I would have to keep costs low for my brewery. I also wanted to keep my full time job as a Product Development Engineer (I like money), so I could only manage brewing about once a week. Finally, it would help if the brewery was close to my house to reduce travel. One place did meet all of those requirements and it’s all too obvious. I decided to build the brewery in the basement of my house. It was temperate all year round, spacious, and added no significant cost. Funny enough, I saw during my research that another person near Toledo was converting their home garage into a commercial brewery just a few miles away from my house. If they could do it, why couldn’t I? The next few months were daily struggles of trying to reach contractors, electricians, state/federal officials, brewing equipment companies, ingredient suppliers, distributors, and piecing together the puzzle known as starting a brewery. It is a puzzle. It was at that time that I also brought my friend Jon on board to help, despite the fact that he lived 2.5 hours away in Columbus, OH.
Logistics & My Brewery
In between work, my personal life, and planning my brewery build, I still needed to work out the logistics of my essentially one man company. I got lucky when my local homebrew shop, Titgemeier’s, was willing to give me discounts on all of my ingredients and equipment. They offered just to support Toledo’s growing craft beer scene! When I talked directly to grain, hops, and yeast suppliers about buying commercially, they were all willing but my small quantities made it too expensive. So a local shop that I could visit on a weekly basis for orders and pickups was perfect.
During my research phase, I visited about 12 restaurants and bars to see if they would be interested in buying beer from my soon to be local brewery. I was stunned when every single manager said yes. A few of them were even more excited than I was because the local beer selection was so limited. I remember one of the restaurants asked if they could pay a premium for same day deliveries. They consistently had empty taps and had to wait until their distributor dropped off weekly shipments. Empty taps don’t help anybody! Another restaurant happened to only serve beer in bottles, but asked us to figure out a way to integrate our kegs into their bar. Now that’s willingness.
After talking to a distributor, we both agreed that I was too small for either party to make money. So I planned on hand delivering all of the kegs to the bars by myself. Thankfully, the most requested keg size was a 1/6bbl. This was preferable so I could easily lift the small kegs into my car for deliveries. I had chosen kegs instead bottles for simplicity. Bottles are labor intensive. You have to keep ordering bottles, caps, labels, and boxes. Then you have to apply caps and labels to each bottle. If you choose to bottle condition then you have to store bottles in your limited brewery space and they take longer until they’re ready. Kegs seemed like the better option as they could be reused over and over.
Regulations & Red Tape
There are a ton of people you have to talk to when trying to open a brewery, and they all have different goals. Some examples are the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, and Health Department. Some of the early paperwork required a name for the brewery and Jon and I had trouble agreeing on a name. We decided that even a cool name could be made lame if the logo was corny. So we enlisted the help of a local graphic designer to help us create some logos for a short list of names. We finally agreed on the name and logo you see to the right.
However, after talking to those entities, I found that nobody had any major issues with me opening a brewery in my basement. They all requested certain things to meet their codes, but nothing was unreasonable. For instance, they wanted a 3 basin sink so I could clean, sanitize, and rinse equipment separately. Another request was to have all non-porous surfaces on the walls and floor by using paint or plastic boards. This was easy. Why was nobody else selling beer from their basement? Maybe I was just a pioneer. Then a seemingly reasonable request caused some problems. I was asked to separate the brewery portion of my basement from my personal home by putting up walls and having a door that locked from inside the brewery. That didn’t seem so bad, but the caveat was they wouldn’t allow the door between the brewery and my personal basement to be the main point of access. I would need to add an extra door to my basement which was completely underground. So I called out a contractor and got a quote for installing the extra door. It was going to be $6,000! Even worse, I was now starting to play with another $160k investment known as my home. Just to be clear, I hadn’t built or bought anything at this point. I was still in the planning stages so I was able to shift directions easily.
With the basement out of the question, I turned to my 2.5 car garage. The extra 0.5 was at the back of the garage and just held lawn equipment and tools. Although tiny, I did a quick layout and realized I could squeeze all of my equipment in there. Planning resumed and everything was going well. At the final stages of planning I was told to contact the local Building Department. After talking to them I realized I was not going to be (legally) brewing commercial beer out of my home at all. My neighborhood’s zoning did not allow for any type of retail business. No matter how small or quiet. The only exception would be if retail was an accessory to the main business. Such as a piano teacher who sells sheet music to their students. The main purpose of their business isn’t to sell sheet music, but it’s allowed since it’s an accessory to giving piano lessons. Either way, I needed to find another place to brew my beer.
I looked at several commercially zoned buildings but they all had the same problem. They cost money. The rental property would cancel out almost all of my profit since my operation was so small. The cheapest location was a 400 square feet suite, but it turned out that the zoning was still incorrect for a brewery. To afford a decent property, I would have to get a bigger system or brew more often. However, this would take more money and more time to distribute more beer. Brewing would have to become my full time job and I wasn’t ready to take a substantial pay cut to make that happen. I had one last idea, but wasn’t sure if it was even a reasonable thing to ask of a friend.
The Last Few Straws
My favorite local bar had a young, charismatic owner that had built a cult following of craft beer lovers since he took ownership. The bar was simply called The Local. After pitching my idea to convert his tiny unused kitchen into a craft brewery, he agreed as long as nothing would disrupt his bar. The best part was the bar was located in Holland, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the same officials that I had formed a grudge against in Toledo. They were just doing their jobs but they were killing my dream! Unfortunately, this attempt was short lived. The company that owned the building didn’t see an advantage to separating the bar from the kitchen as required by state regulation. Since two separate companies can’t live under one roof/address. I would have done the construction to seal off the one connecting doorway, but splitting the lease was too difficult for them. After all, paperwork is hard. There’s a computer and a printer and then somebody needs a pen. It’s a whole ordeal. We would also be violating what’s called the Tied House Act. You can read the description of this violation in the picture below. After six months of anxiously planning, my dream was dead.
Remember that other guy I mentioned that was converting his garage into a brewery? Even though he only lived a few miles from me, the regulations in his city were different. He was able to successfully launch his brewery that year. When I ran into him at our local homebrew shop a few months later, he said he could not keep up with demand and was already debating a larger setup and facility. After just 3 months of being in business! More recently I saw that he has signed a lease to move into a new location where he can continue to grow. Jealousy aside, I’m glad he was able to make his garage brewery a reality. It makes me feel a little less crazy for trying the same thing unsuccessfully. But what do you expect? When you’re passionate about something it tends to make you a little crazy. Toledo was slow to catch onto the craft beer scene, but since my failed attempt(s) 20 months ago, 3 new breweries have opened and 2 more are currently being built. All 5 of those breweries have stemmed (in one way or another) from the Toledo homebrew club known as the Glass City Mashers. The itch is obviously there, but who’s crazy enough to scratch it?
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