Has anyone opened a cidery recently and wish to share advice?

[cfinck91]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of starting my my own cidery, and wanted to reach out and ask if anyone thay has recently gone through had and advice or suggestion's for someone just starting the process. The information on doing this is extremy fragmented and hard to come by as most of it is focused at the home cider maker.

I understand that it's mostly a figure it out as you go process, but I will listen to any advice. From initial formation of the company and early stages,first month challenges, proper "winery" set up, finances, aging, to finishing and bottling (still or carbed), no advice is off limits if your willing to share.

I appreciate it.

 

[mikerlynch26]

Well I started a brewery with my best friend and if there are any parallels with a cidery, I'd say the first is money. We thought we could bootstrap it at first with nothing but our own money and no debt, but realized quickly that it hobbled us significantly. Especially with the boom of small craft breweries coming up all around us with significant investor money. They were expanding at a much faster rate, and more importantly, starting out at a much larger capacity than we did. The brewery is still going but the focus has shifted into very niche, expensive products with very limited availability and variability to compensate for limited production.

The second is your time. I cannot stress this enough, and it was the reason I've "retired" from the brewery. My friend and I both tried to maintain full time jobs while running the brewery, and I can tell you if you want to keep your family, friends, significant other, and hair, you won't do this. Always figure in the fact that you will need to be full time working on this, and budget a fair salary to keep you afloat while you do.

 

[Klickitat]

Well I started a brewery with my best friend and if there are any parallels with a cidery, I'd say the first is money. We thought we could bootstrap it at first with nothing but our own money and no debt, but realized quickly that it hobbled us significantly. Especially with the boom of small craft breweries coming up all around us with significant investor money. They were expanding at a much faster rate, and more importantly, starting out at a much larger capacity than we did. The brewery is still going but the focus has shifted into very niche, expensive products with very limited availability and variability to compensate for limited production.

The second is your time. I cannot stress this enough, and it was the reason I've "retired" from the brewery. My friend and I both tried to maintain full time jobs while running the brewery, and I can tell you if you want to keep your family, friends, significant other, and hair, you won't do this. Always figure in the fact that you will need to be full time working on this, and budget a fair salary to keep you afloat while you do.

So do feel like sharing what you started with for capacity and maybe some #'s production wise.

 

[bembel]

Hi all,



I'm in the process of starting my my own cidery, and wanted to reach out and ask if anyone thay has recently gone through had and advice or suggestion's for someone just starting the process. The information on doing this is extremy fragmented and hard to come by as most of it is focused at the home cider maker.



I understand that it's mostly a figure it out as you go process, but I will listen to any advice. From initial formation of the company and early stages,first month challenges, proper "winery" set up, finances, aging, to finishing and bottling (still or carbed), no advice is off limits if your willing to share.



I appreciate it.

If you wish to connect with other commercial cider makers and ask questions about costs and equipment the Cider Workshop group on Google is the best place. I have a cost estimate document somewhere on my work computer I will try to dig up for you today as well

 

[mikerlynch26]

So do feel like sharing what you started with for capacity and maybe some #'s production wise.

The brewery was previously a disused and mostly Frankenstein'd brewpub system, very manual and labor intensive, with a lot of (expensive) quirks to learn. We put more than one batch down the drain due to failed temp probes, solenoid valves, glycol failures. It's a 10 bbl steam fired kettle, a taller-than-should-be mash tun with perforated mash plates (don't use perforated), and four dish bottom 10 bbl grundy tanks, two of which have carb stones. Fermenter capacity was the real issue, we used one of the vessels as a brite tank, so that meant we really only had 30 bbls of simultaneous fermentation space. Between poor design of the mash tun (requiring smaller batch sizes so we didn't stick the mash) to losses due to trub in the dish bottoms, we average only about 8.5 bbls finished beer per batch. Add kegging/bottling losses, even less.

There was no bottling equipment when we bought it (4 head filler now) and while the cold storage is pretty good (9x20) there was no room for pallets of empty bottles or grain (which will take up a shocking amount of room, due to the fact that you have to have a minimum order for shipment, which can be 5 huge pallets or more).

You can do the math on annual production, and obviously there would be differences for cider (longer ferment, less process loss).