I went "pro" - What it actually takes to do so

[OldWorld]

A very small respected brewer told me that a 10bbl or 15bbl would be the best small size to actually turn a profit.

Good luck. Brew with New Zealand hops...they're the best in the world

 

[Cape Brewing]

Maybe somebody asked this already and I didn't read the whole thread but why go through all of that work to do a nano brewery where you said you knew you would barely break even?

Read post #11

 

[Cape Brewing]

A very small respected brewer told me that a 10bbl or 15bbl would be the best small size to actually turn a profit.

It depends on what you mean by " turn a profit". We will be profitable with pur little 1.5 bbl this month.... But on a tiny scale. We will have positive cash flow almost immediately but it is a tiny amount (and none of us are taking salaries) so again, it depends on how exactly "profitable" is being defined.

 

[AVLbrewing]

I have another question for you, I know you mentioned the issues with running propane, and then upgrading the natural gas lines, but at any point did you consider going electric? I know a guy that is opening up a brewpub locally who went that route. Was it just a matter of what your were familiar with, or were there other considerations/limitations? It would seem to be that the precision and automation of electric brewing would be a plus in a commercial operation where consistency is required.

Thanks!

 

[Cape Brewing]

The building we are in would explode if we tried to go that route. The electrical in the building is ancient and would have taken a ton of work. Granted. It took all sorts of work to have the nat gas run but going electric never crossed our mind. I am not sure I agree with electric being any more precise than gas. We are doing simple infusions and at the thermal mass of our mash tun, we only bleed off a degree of temp over our mash so we arent going to bother with a HERMS coil or anything like that. When the strike water hits the needed temps, you simply shut the burner off. I am not sure I agree that having an electric heat stick auto-shut off makes that process any more accurate.

I think it is 100% personal preference and we are a gas set up.

 

[WissahickonBrew]

Maybe somebody asked this already and I didn't read the whole thread but why go through all of that work to do a nano brewery where you said you knew you would barely break even?

LOL - You should read the thread man! In addition to having your question answered, you will pick up a whole lot more! :rockin:

 

[SCBrewster]

I figured I would get that response haha

 

[Nightshade]

A very small respected brewer told me that a 10bbl or 15bbl would be the best small size to actually turn a profit.

Good luck. Brew with New Zealand hops...they're the best in the world

meh....local brewer here has been turning a good enough profit for the last two years on a 1.5bbl system to purchase a 10bbl setup in cash and also pay for both of his expansions in cash. It's a lot of work but if done right and you aren't a fool with your money you can turn a profit on a 10gal system.

 

[bobdole]

Congrats Cape and kudos to all your hard work! Where abouts/when are your release parties? I may be jumping the gun here, but will you guys will be at ACBF in June?

 

[Cape Brewing]

The release parties will be:

Sat. Feb 16th at Kinsale in Boston
Weds: Feb 20th at Trinity in Norton

(More details on our website)

And yes, we will actually be at the ACBF in June. We confirmed our spot already with beeradvocate. We keep laughing, hoping they put us between Sierra Nevada and DFH.

 

[aarong]

On the tasting room... yes, we have spoken with our town's board of selectmen and they've "unofficially" approved us having a tasting room. We have to fill out another pile of forms and get an actual liquor license just like a regular bar. The nice thing is that in Massachusetts, because we have a Farmer-Brewer license, our liquor license doesn't count against the town quota so we are almost a rubber stamp approval, for about a $100 filing fee, instead of paying $10k for a liquor license off an existing bar owner.

And yeah... we are going to sell growlers out of the brewery..

but..

we all have full time jobs and families so it ain't like the brewery is going to be open every day from noon to 10PM. We'll sell them when we can and see what we can make.

We haven't filled out any of that paperwork yet only because we want to get up, running, get our release parties behind us, get our beers into normal rotations ar bars and then worry about growlers. That said, i have the paperwork on my counter at home and will likely get to a large chunk of this weekend (after brewing all day Saturday that is.). Luckily we can leverage a ton of our TTB paperwork for the Pourer's license.

Have you looked into hiring a part time employee for a few hours a day to give samples and fill growlers? I'm sure you will find willing individuals for 10-15 an hour which you can make if they fill one growler a shift.

 

[paulthenurse]

I'm offering you two racks of 'Gansett and a carton of Luckies for your entire operation. I can get twice your costs in the scrap metal market . Just sayin '!

 

[Cape Brewing]

Do you have to be a dick ONE HUNDRED percent of the time?

 

[paulthenurse]

It sure does seem so.



For those of you following this thread Capes "Coming Out" party will be this Saturday at a bar called Kinsale (like the town on the SE coast of Ireland) near Government Center. Take the Red Line to Government Center, walk across Cambridge Street, turn right and its down 100 yards on your left. Fortunately they will have a large selection if good beer on tsp, so show up, choke down a pint of Bog Water and then you can spend the rest of the night telling Cape how great his beer is while you pound Le Chouf.

 

[Whalewang]

Great post.
Could you supply detailed info on your fermenters and your glycol setup pls?

 

[Darwin18]

I'm also interested in hearing more about your setup as well. Do you guys have keg filling equipment?

 

[Cape Brewing]

Great post.
Could you supply detailed info on your fermenters and your glycol setup pls?

For our fermenters we are using 200 liter variable headspace fermenter tanks. They are usually used for wine but they are stainless, have spigoted bottoms and work perfect for us. We also got a fantastic deal on them as opposed to wasting money on conicals (must.... not... rant... about how... dumb... conicals are).

We simply coiled the outside of them with 1/2 " soft drawn copper tubing and then wrapped that with the silver foil lined insulation wrap. We have an A/C unit frankensteined into a chiller for a glycol reservoir which then is moved by PID-controlled pump and manifold solenoids. We can simply punch in a number on the PIDs and the system does the rest. We are still a little shocked at how efficient the system is.


If you want real specifics, I would simply do a google search or two. What we did isn't uncommon and I am sure there are way better directions out there than I could provide.

 

[Cape Brewing]

I'm also interested in hearing more about your setup as well. Do you guys have keg filling equipment?

We don't have commercial keg cleaning/filling equip. We built our own set up out of pumps and some new sanke tap connectors. Also, we bought brand new sankes that allow the entire spear to simply be unscrewed so if we want, we can get in and manually scrub a keg clean. Its not idea but for our little capacity, they work really really well.

Right now we are force carbing the old fashioned "shake method" but that is changing soon. We are putting a specific brite tank/carbonation tank together and will carb in that in bulk and then force fill the kegs.

 

[Cape Brewing]

One last note... We had our first release party this past Saturday night and it was insane. I walked around all night in a daze because everything had gone way better than we had hoped. We brought 12 1/6th kegs with us (3 kegs of four different styles) and kicked 10 of them. Three styles kicked completely with our IPA totally kicking about 90 minutes into the event. The style that didnt kick was an English Mild and we had two full kegs of that left over (we weren't shocked). We got a lot of compliments on the mild and I think it is a really nice beer but... It's a 3.5% Mild... Not hugely marketable.

I am not at all pushing our facebook account but there are a ton of pics from the event in the "past events" section of our facebook page if anyone is interested.

 

[Darwin18]

Congrats on the successful release party Cape! Also thank you for answering my question about the keg filling equipment. I'm glad to see that professional brewers are continuing to utilize the DIY skills that homebrewers use in their setups. Have any pictures of your equipment (mmm beer porn!) that you could post up to this thread? I'm always interested in seeing how the "pros" set up their equipment.

 

[Cape Brewing]

No problem at all and unfortunately I dont have many pics. Even if I did, trust me, they aren't as sexy as you might expect.

This link is our "fermenter cam" though... Give's at least a glimpse.

It snaps a pic every ten minutes I think and posts it to this link so we can monitor our fermentation temps at all times from our phones.

http://bogironbrewing.com/images/cam1/BogCam1_1.jpg

 

[solbes]

Way cool Cape. Best of luck to you!

I personally think the starting small capacity is perfect. Build up the rep, get your feet wet, and decide if you want to go all in.

 

[2BeerSpeer]

Nice read

 

[Cape Brewing]

Way cool Cape. Best of luck to you!

I personally think the starting small capacity is perfect. Build up the rep, get your feet wet, and decide if you want to go all in.

Thank you very much. Is been.... interesting... so far.

It was the right approach for us. May not be for everyone but I think we are glad we went this way.

 

[Disintegr8or]

Cool thread. Good luck with it!

 

[2BeerSpeer]

Thank you very much. Is been.... interesting... so far.

It was the right approach for us. May not be for everyone but I think we are glad we went this way.

My friend just opened a brewery and started with a sabco....we've done a lot of brewing to get ahead but they are pricing larger systems now....I believe they are going with a 10 bbl but have discussed a 15 bbl....good luck

 

[Whalewang]

For our fermenters we are using 200 liter variable headspace fermenter tanks. They are usually used for wine but they are stainless, have spigoted bottoms and work perfect for us. We also got a fantastic deal on them as opposed to wasting money on conicals

New/used? Who manufactures them?

Gratz on the great turn out!

 

[Conan]

Great read, thanks for all the info! And tonight's your second revealing, right? Good luck! Kyle

 

[Cape Brewing]

New/used? Who manufactures them?

Gratz on the great turn out!

http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/wine-tank-200-liter/4,10000.html

This isnt where we bought them from, it is just the first link I found. We got them cheaper than what these guys have them at.

 

[Cape Brewing]

Great read, thanks for all the info! And tonight's your second revealing, right? Good luck! Kyle

It was. We were really psyched and flattered with how it went. We went through another dozen kegs really quickly. It was pretty cool.

We're now OUT of beer. The two release parties sold out of everything we had made.