How would you price your homebrew? market value.

[bernerbrau]

Any form of EXCHANGE for homebrew is considered illegal under the 1978 repeal of the ban on homebrewing, H.R. 1337...unless of course you become licensed to do so, and pay taxes.

That's the bottom line, folks.

Not trying to be argumentative, but... how are our swaps legal then?

 

[TopherM]

You know, I used to work at a Rock Bottom/Big River brewery as a bartender, and also spent alot of time helping out the regional brewer on various weekend mornings. I was also in charge of inventory, including brewed beer stock, which was a tricky one.

Anyway, we made 7 basic brews, then had one or two rotating seasonals. All of the basic brews cost in the neighborhood of 9-12 cents a PINT to produce. From there, there was a federal tax of about 28 cents per pint sold, and a state tax of about 77 cents per pint sold, including the overhead of ongoing licencing and compliance and sales tax. This was in South Carolina, which I am told has pretty strict beer laws and above average licencing fees.

Anyway, so you have to think that in the real world your beer costs much more in overhead than it will to make, so an average homebrew is probably worth about $1.05 PLUS cost of goods PLUS cost of labor, then marked up about 25-50%.

I bet my average batch at my current costs would demand about $20.00 cost of goods, PLUS $1.05/pint federal/state taxes and overhead ($43.05/batch...this number is probably MUCH lower in a mass-production facility in the three-tier system), PLUS about $60.00 labor PLUS 25% markup= $153.81/batch divided by 55 bottles = $2.79 a bottle or $16.78 a six pack or $3.72 a pint to gross about $32 a batch BEFORE the rest of my overhead (production facility, equipment, etc.).

So, basically, without getting my costs WAYYYYY down, I would be selling $3.75 pints at the local brewpub to make about $0.58 per beer sold before other set costs. Not too bad!

 

[makomachine]

Not trying to be argumentative, but... how are our swaps legal then?

A friend of my second cousin's girlfriend said its fine and she once temped at a law firm in Chicago. No worries!

 

[BrewerinBR]

Never sold any home brew, never will, even if it were legal to sell it I would not. The reason is simple, I cannot put a price on it, because Home Brew is PRICELESS!

 

[Revvy]

Not trying to be argumentative, but... how are our swaps legal then?

I never said they were, or weren't. Like I said in a later post I just did some searching for federal ttb info for swaps or exchanges for "educational purposes" and couldn't find answers yay or nay. SOmeone else posted in response to me that it might be handled on a state by state basis. I mentioned in my response to HIS post that even laws regarding clubs are different state to state. (Ya gotta keep up. )

For all we know exchanges are illegal....I know on here there's reasons why Tex and the mods only want "official" swaps to be done between paying members and I think behind the "google wall."

But probably it has to do with "intent."

 

[asidrane]

Hey i know what most people are getting at. It just frustrates me that often times a person will ask a question like this, which could lead to an interesting discussion, and everyone jumps all over it just saying nope nope illegal illegal.

and of course dismissing an argument that reasonably and logically counters your own as "tired" is another really adult, intelligent, and mature line of discussion to engage in. the fact that people can't have intelligent hypothetical discussions about things as trivial as "if you could legally sell your beer, what would it cost" without people who feel like their smarter then everyone else getting on a soap box and preaching (or acting the reverend if you will) about the importance of obeying minor laws and statutes is absurd. if you have something to add to a discussion then add it, but don't jump in just to tell people how they're questions are stupid or leading towards "sinful thought"

Thank you. There are too many attempts to end intelligent hypothetical discussions on the internet. If you aren't interested in the subject, don't reply.

I would like to sell a 22oz bottle of Hoppicratic Oath for $8.

 

[BelgianKing]

My buddie and I share equipment, which I have the MT, Burner and wort chiller. He uses my stuff and in return he gives me a few brews. To me its just friends being friends. Its nice to have a variety too. He brews a stout, I brew a IPA. We share them. My cousin the other day asked me if he could buy a 6er of my IPA. I told him that I dont sell my beer. If you would like some then come over when I schedule my IPA and help make it. Then come over to help bottle it. Gets them involved to see the awesome process and maybe get them to buy a kit and start making it. This is my hobby and outlet to create. The smiles on peoples faces after they try my beer is the best for me. I am a chef so its the same thing when people eat my food at my restaurant.

If I were to sell it, I would sell it for $5,000 a 12oz. Any takers?

 

[Revvy]

If I were to sell it, I would sell it for $5,000 a 12oz. Any takers?

Only if it were stuffed up a taxidermy squirrel's butt.

 

[hamrd]

If you had to place a market value on your homebrew, how much? If you were to sell it or purchase it, what would the value be, in your best opinion. By the gallon or by the bottle, finished product. Just trying have some input in a debate. Thanks

probably more than anyone would ever pay

 

[Bobby_M]

A business plan involving bottled distribution at the nano-brewery level would never get the investment. The only nano model that works as far as I know is the 100% tasting room and/or mixed with local keg distribution. There's just way too much overhead in packaging and the market retail price is too low. In other words, you can get $4 a pint in a tasting room.

 

[LVBen]

Wow! This EAC thread went bad very quickly!

I don't think the OPs intent was to actually sell homebrew. It is probably just meant to be theoretical.
Money represents value/services/work. There is value in your homebrews, whether you actually sell them or not. I think the OP just wants to know what that value is in our own opinions.

I hope you didn't scare her away after her first post.

 

[LVBen]

I'd sell my APAs at a similar price to SN APA. $6/6 pack.
I'd sell my IPAs at about $4-$5 per bomber.
I'd sell 1-year old barleywines for $7/bomber.

I'd have free domestic shipping on all orders over $75.

 

[Germelli1]

Agreed with LVBen!

With the brews I brew the most, this is probably where I would price them.
Kolsch-$6 per sick pack.
Maibock/Altbier/Marzen/American amber (seasonal rotation)- all for $7-$8 per sixer
Mild brown ale/Ordinary bitter/etc (all session ales) - $5 a sixer

I would be like starr hill and always have some cool beers on tap just in the tasting room for the local like their dry hopped imperial stout, Thomas Jefferson Ale, DIPA, etc etc

 

[Phunhog]

A business plan involving bottled distribution at the nano-brewery level would never get the investment. The only nano model that works as far as I know is the 100% tasting room and/or mixed with local keg distribution. There's just way too much overhead in packaging and the market retail price is too low. In other words, you can get $4 a pint in a tasting room.

I was seriously going the nano route until it was sidelined by my city's zoning laws It probably was a blessing in disguise though. Nano's just don't make enough money, as Bobby said, without a tap room. The profit margin is just too thin selling kegs direct to bars and restaurants. BUT that does not mean you can't recoup costs or even make a little money with your homebrew!! Of course you can't sell your homebrew, that is out of the question. What I did is make an awesome "local" logo and put it on shirts. I sell them at tasting parties and they are a huge hit. People know that I can't sell them beer but they are more than willing to buy a shirt to support the "brewery". Of course I can't "force" them to buy a shirt!! Anyways I have made a couple of hundred dollars. The people get a cool shirt and I cover my beer costs and make a little bit of cash. It's a win/win!!

 

[brewgirl11]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't want to sell it. Trying to come to an agreement on the value. I recently had to forfeit a considerable inventory. I really do need a realistic value. I know it is very difficult to price a labor of love, but in this case, I need to!!

 

[cfonnes]

I made the Rochfort 8 clone recipe that is on this site, except I substituted chocolate malt and carafa for the special B and aromatic. Ran out it last week, right now I would probably give $10 for a 12 oz bottle of that stuff.

Guess what I am brewing next?

For a typical APA that I brew, I would pay $2 - 3 per 12 oz.

 

[BelgianKing]

Only if it were stuffed up a taxidermy squirrel's butt.

That would be worth it then! HAHA!

 

[SimBrew]

I like so much to brew that I already give at least half of every batch to friends and family. My girl friend would never let me brew 15 to 20 batch a year if I didn't share.
Everyone have liked every beer that I gave to now.
Selling it would give peoples the right to tell me it's not good enough and make me give less beer, then brew less and that would make me very sad.

 

[qbst]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't want to sell it. Trying to come to an agreement on the value. I recently had to forfeit a considerable inventory. I really do need a realistic value. I know it is very difficult to price a labor of love, but in this case, I need to!!

Now this is a very different question. Not so much "How much would you sell them for," but "How much would you value them to be." Different questions with different results.

Valuation could be done in any number of ways. Personally, if I were valuing my beer for some reason, I would calculate costs of:

ingredients
bottles (or kegs)
fuel
equipment, including brew software
labor
space

Add those costs together, that's the value of one batch. If you need to divide value into per bottle or per keg, just divide your total batch amount by the number of bottles/kegs, and there you go.

----
Example: Revvy's Squirrel Spew Brew

Ingredients: $42 (grain, hops, yeast, water)
50 bottles, flip top - $4 per bottle, but reused, so $2 per bottle x 50 = $100
fuel: 1/6 propane tank @ $20 per tank = $3.33
equipment: $200 / 4 batches to date = $50
labor: 6 hours @ $15/hr = $90
space: 2 months using 1 sq foot of apartment space @ $1/sq foot per month = $2

Total value: $287.33
per bottle value: $5.75

-----
Note: equip value can be done several ways; labor value is self-determined; bottle value would be different if you used regular bottles; space cost per sq foot would be rent divided by square feet of living space.


I realize my valuation method includes almost everything possible, but really, that's the only way I would feel comfortable valuing the products of a hobby.

 

[BrewThruYou]

My girl friend would never let me brew 15 to 20 batch a year if I didn't share.

You would also be 400 pounds if you brewed all those batches and drank them all yourself.

 

[Revvy]

Example: Revvy's Squirrel Spew Brew

Ingredients: $42 (grain, hops, yeast, water)
50 bottles, flip top - $4 per bottle, but reused, so $2 per bottle x 50 = $100
fuel: 1/6 propane tank @ $20 per tank = $3.33
equipment: $200 / 4 batches to date = $50
labor: 6 hours @ $15/hr = $90
space: 2 months using 1 sq foot of apartment space @ $1/sq foot per month = $2

Total value: $287.33
per bottle value: $5.75

I wonder what the true breakdown of that beer would be, since in reality it retails for 765.00 a bottle and has an abv of 55%

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3837604...dkill-worlds-most-shocking-beer/#.TjlcgmHlyyU

 

[bad coffee]

An old roommate begged me to make her two kegs for her 'fundraising party' She said she'd pay for the ingredients.

$100,000, per keg.

Yes, I will indeed sell a keg of my home brew for that much. I figure $50,000 for the fines, $25,000 lawyers fees, $10,000 for the bail money, $5,000 for the lost wages, and $5,000 for all my equipment they take/break (including the beer that's in the kegerator.) and that leaves me $5,000 for all the bull**** I go through.

I put a tip jar on the kegerator at one big house party.

6 kegs kicked, $9 in the jar at the end of the night! $7 was from one of the roommates, so I gave it back to him...

B

 

[bad coffee]

What do you mean by "Forfeit a considerable inventory?"

We need the rest of the story!!!


As for VALUE cost, add up EVERYTHING it takes you to brew a batch.

WATER. Don't forget chilling, cleaning and brewing. This does add up.
Cleaners, sanitizers
ingredients
yeast
bottles & caps
Fuel/electric for brewing
electric for fermenting temp control
electric for chilling ready-to-serve beer

Equipment costs. I figure depreciation to how long I'm actually going to use the item. Pots, spoons, kegs, etc I look at like 15-50 years. I mean how many brews would it take to make a stainless pot unusable?
Hoses/fittings/orings 1 year

Time. Your time it takes to set up, brew, rack, package, check, test, and deliver the beer. Don't forget cleanup, shopping for ingredients, recipe formulation as well. It's all time spent on one beer. Also include the time it takes to ferment.

Space: not just storage space for your beer, but your equipment as well.

B

 

[a10t2]

I'll assume a 10 gal batch. Since a couple people mentioned SNPA, an average-gravity, moderately-hopped APA would look something like:

20 lb grain: $15
8 oz hops: $6
Yeast, you'd be repitching, so let's call it: $2
5 lb propane: $3
Miscellaneous chemicals, water, salts, etc: $1
96 bottles, caps, six-pack holders: $44
12 hr labor: $87

$1.65 per bottle, or $9.90 per six pack, gets you a stack of unlabeled, undistributed bottles sitting in your living room. With fuel costs where they are, you'd be looking at a minimum of $11/six pack just to break even. If you priced it at $15/six pack, and worked every day, alternating brewing and packaging, you'd be making minimum wage and clearing a whopping $11,688 a year in profits before taxes, equipment maintenance, etc.

Legalities aside, there's a reason no one sells homebrew.

 

[stamandster]

What do you mean by "Forfeit a considerable inventory?"

Divorce or fire/flood/hurrican/tornado/earthquake maybe?

I definitely agree that there's a perceived value because of the time spent doing the hobby. But for something like insurance you have to have the material cost only. So water@vol costs X amount, electricity used@duration/amps/wattage equals X amount, etc. (not sure you can count water, just an example)

 

[Weizenwerks]

A business plan involving bottled distribution at the nano-brewery level would never get the investment. The only nano model that works as far as I know is the 100% tasting room and/or mixed with local keg distribution. There's just way too much overhead in packaging and the market retail price is too low. In other words, you can get $4 a pint in a tasting room.

Plenty of nanobreweries are doing just fine without a tap room. I know of several that sell only wholesale, no tap room, no in person sales. They are doing just fine with that business model.

 

[Weizenwerks]

You know, I used to work at a Rock Bottom/Big River brewery as a bartender, and also spent alot of time helping out the regional brewer on various weekend mornings. I was also in charge of inventory, including brewed beer stock, which was a tricky one.

Anyway, we made 7 basic brews, then had one or two rotating seasonals. All of the basic brews cost in the neighborhood of 9-12 cents a PINT to produce. From there, there was a federal tax of about 28 cents per pint sold, and a state tax of about 77 cents per pint sold, including the overhead of ongoing licencing and compliance and sales tax. This was in South Carolina, which I am told has pretty strict beer laws and above average licencing fees.

Anyway, so you have to think that in the real world your beer costs much more in overhead than it will to make, so an average homebrew is probably worth about $1.05 PLUS cost of goods PLUS cost of labor, then marked up about 25-50%.

I bet my average batch at my current costs would demand about $20.00 cost of goods, PLUS $1.05/pint federal/state taxes and overhead ($43.05/batch...this number is probably MUCH lower in a mass-production facility in the three-tier system), PLUS about $60.00 labor PLUS 25% markup= $153.81/batch divided by 55 bottles = $2.79 a bottle or $16.78 a six pack or $3.72 a pint to gross about $32 a batch BEFORE the rest of my overhead (production facility, equipment, etc.).

So, basically, without getting my costs WAYYYYY down, I would be selling $3.75 pints at the local brewpub to make about $0.58 per beer sold before other set costs. Not too bad!

An easier way to state it is to factor your cost of production, labor, taxes, and other overhead. That's the true cost of goods sold (COGS). Then price it per unit; generally per pint. Much easier to factor everything into a final and true COGS and price from there.

 

[Phunhog]

I'll assume a 10 gal batch. Since a couple people mentioned SNPA, an average-gravity, moderately-hopped APA would look something like:

20 lb grain: $15
8 oz hops: $6
Yeast, you'd be repitching, so let's call it: $2
5 lb propane: $3
Miscellaneous chemicals, water, salts, etc: $1
96 bottles, caps, six-pack holders: $44
12 hr labor: $87

$1.65 per bottle, or $9.90 per six pack, gets you a stack of unlabeled, undistributed bottles sitting in your living room. With fuel costs where they are, you'd be looking at a minimum of $11/six pack just to break even. If you priced it at $15/six pack, and worked every day, alternating brewing and packaging, you'd be making minimum wage and clearing a whopping $11,688 a year in profits before taxes, equipment maintenance, etc.

Legalities aside, there's a reason no one sells homebrew.

BUT take out bottling and labor....You are only in it for 27 dollars!! You are going to brew anyways so I would subtract labor. Have people bring in their own growlers and you don't have to worry about bottles or time to sanitize/fill them. 20 growler fills equals 10 gallons of beer. NOT that I would ever do that since it is illegal.

 

[ACbrewer]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't want to sell it. Trying to come to an agreement on the value. I recently had to forfeit a considerable inventory. I really do need a realistic value. I know it is very difficult to price a labor of love, but in this case, I need to!!

1. Find a comperable microbrew that is sold and you could use that for a baseline.
2. the add up of ingredients, bottle costs, etc that have been posted are pretty good.
3. you owe us a story of 'forfeited inventory'... wait not just inventory, but CONSIDERABLE inventory.

 

[TopherM]

Plenty of nanobreweries are doing just fine without a tap room. I know of several that sell only wholesale, no tap room, no in person sales. They are doing just fine with that business model.

There are like 39 states where the three-tier system is the law of the land, so producers are forced by law to sell wholesale. They legally can't sell retail unless they own the retail outlet (i.e., brewpub, taproom). If you took the three-tier system and lowered the federal, state, and interstate taxes on beer, Bud Light would cost like $2.00 a sixer and microbrews would be closer to domestic prices.

Alas, the gov't REALLY has their claws in the alcoholic beverage industry!!

 

[Weizenwerks]

There are like 39 states where the three-tier system is the law of the land, so producers are forced by law to sell wholesale. They legally can't sell retail unless they own the retail outlet (i.e., brewpub, taproom).

My state allows self distribution of a microbrewery (as defined as less than 30,000 barrels annual production) to be able to be served on premises for on or off premises consumption with no other restrictions. I don't have to have a tap room. I can brew and package in the back and sell retail up front in bottles, growlers, kegs, or cans if I want to. My state has a three tier law with less limits on microbreweries.

 

[houndsbreath]

I see the reason behind factoring in equipment and what not but that'll be used numerous times over hundreds of batches. I figure if I ever was to brew and sell a significant portion, I'd sell for $10 per 6 pack for a ~6% ABV beer. If i started selling beers, I would upgrade to 20 gal batches, buy grain/hops/sanitizer in bulk and thereby cut my coat per batch...To answer the OP: $10/ 6 pack seems fare these days for a truly hand crafted, fresh ale. Give 5% to the Lost Puppy Fund or something just to win over the hippies TopherM has it right on the money! If the damned state would let the breweries distribute their own products, I GUARANTEE we'd see lower prices...

 

[a10t2]

BUT take out bottling and labor....You are only in it for 27 dollars!! You are going to brew anyways so I would subtract labor.

I wouldn't look at it that way, since if I knew I was going to be giving it all away I definitely would not be brewing anyway.

But let's say that you keep your day job and only brew once a week, and only do growler refills. At $15 per fill (which I'm pretty sure would price you out of the market in most places) you're going to clear just under $14,000 a year. Which is a nice little bit of supplementary income to be sure, but is it worth breaking the law?

I'm not sure what someone would get out of operating a "taproom" like that. You'd be better off picking up a couple shifts at McDonald's.

 

[Weizenwerks]

I see the reason behind factoring in equipment and what not but that'll be used numerous times over hundreds of batches.

The cost of equipment is amortized over the useful life of the equipment and then factored in the cost of your beer production.

TopherM has it right on the money! If the damned state would let the breweries distribute their own products, I GUARANTEE we'd see lower prices...

I don't think many would lower their prices. Customers have been conditioned to purchase the beer at the current price. If they pay that price now they will still pay that price if your overhead and COGS were lowered. When other microbreweries expand capacity and increase production, thus reducing costs not a single one of them that I know of has lowered their price.