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

[FermentusMaximus]

Hey Cape My wife and I are headed to Welfleet on Monday August 25th. Where's the taproom located and what hours will it be open to the public?

 

[Cape Brewing]

Hey Cape My wife and I are headed to Welfleet on Monday August 25th. Where's the taproom located and what hours will it be open to the public?

It is located dead smack in the middle of Norton, Ma (off of 495). 33 W Main St in Norton.

We are likely going to be closed on Mondays though unfortunately.

We haven't set hours in stone yet. We're going to soft-open, figure out how much beer we're going to be going through and then figure out how many hours we can stay open and not be sold outta everything on a constant basis.

That said... we are hoping to get to something... Eventually... Like:

Sunday: closed
Monday: closed
Tues-Thurs: 4-9
Fri: 4-11
Sat: noon-11

Those are ballpark times my partners and I are tossing around but we haven't settled on anything yet.


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[FuriousE]

Very cool thread with great information. Thanks for posting!!

 

[FermentusMaximus]

We are likely going to be closed on Mondays though unfortunately.

If you guys are right off 495 that's a pretty easy trip for us down here in Providence. We head that way all the time on our way to see family in upstate NY. We'll stop in at some point I'm sure.

 

[Cape Brewing]

So far so good. Been open now twice with some nice crowds. Now we focus on expanding the brewhouse.


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[FastAndy]

Cape, if you're ever in the market for a production, 50bbl (13k+ bbl a year) 2 vessel system experienced and ABG educated brewer looking for a smaller work environment with a wife from NE, give me a shout.

 

[day_trippr]

Not seeing any yoga pants.

Fail.

Cheers!

 

[Cape Brewing]

Been a while so I figued I would add a quick update to this necro-thread...

New lease became official a few days ago (on the 1st) and we've essentially multiplied our footprint by five within our building.

General Contractor was in this past Saturday cutting the concrete for the floor drains and new 15 bbl brewhouse ordered and expected in mid-April.

Should be an interesting year.

 

[Bensiff]

Good for you Cape! Best of luck in the land of the stainless debt cycle.

 

[Cape Brewing]

We have yet to take out a penny of debt. (Unless I am missing a different reference).

The initial funding was a very small amount of money between myself and my two partners and 100% of the growth has been organically funded.

We paid cash for the new brewhouse out of sales revenue.

 

[TrickyDick]

Congrats on the success! You and your partners still working day jobs?
Curious what kind of QA/QC you're operating, as well as any plans for a yeast lab. Any dumped batches? How is the keg program doing? I thought you'd bought a bunch of two piece kegs initially and built a Frankenstein washer. Any inventory problems (keg theft)? What's the state limit for self distro?

TD

 

[Cape Brewing]

Wow... that's a lotta specific questions...

We are currently only a 3 bbl brewery so our Qc program is still fairl y basic. We ensure gravities are correct and then we taste each batch but there isn't much more to it than that. Frankly, I'm not 100% sure you truly need much more than that but that's a debate for another thread. Yeast lab... yes... we are def planning on setting up a small lab that would be right-sozed for our new brewhouse. Right now we simply pitch brand new slugs of fresh yeast because, given the batch sizes we're doing, it's not cost prohibitive and it's a ton easier. That said... that approach is not sustainable and we're going to move to yeast brinks for all of our strains (6-7 strains right now). Keg distribution is going great. It gets out name out and does a ton of advertising for us but the real revenue is in the tap room. We'll do more in one day of sales in the tap room than all of our tap accounts combined on a monthly basis.

I would NOT recommend the removable-stem kegs. We haven't had a ton of issues with them but enough that they are a bit of a pain. That and the fact that we have never once taken the damn spear out to clean a keg. We have a DIY keg washer that is all automated (my partner Frank did a killer job setting it up) and it's 10,000 time easier than taking each keg apart. And no, we haven't had a single keg stolen... but... we don't retail ANY kegs. They are all wholesale to a short list of tap accounts.

No state limit on self distribution

 

[TrickyDick]

Well congrats again!
Yeah, I was really curious about that part of the business.
With the larger sized batches you'll be brewing, will you need a new spent grain plan?
You're really lucky to be in a self-distro state. I'm in FL, and as soon as I started learning the three-tier system in place, my dream kinda crushed a little. Then they passed a heinous law that says even tap room sales must go through a distro, plus lots of other pro-middle man zingers for the new start-ups as far as tap rooms. Its a damn shame. Lets not even talk about the ridiculous growler laws, yet they sell liquor in 1.75L bottles. Politics. Least I can live vicariously reading about your success. Keep it up! Next time I'm in MA, I'll have to see where I can find a pint of your brew.

TD

 

[Bensiff]

We have yet to take out a penny of debt. (Unless I am missing a different reference).

The initial funding was a very small amount of money between myself and my two partners and 100% of the growth has been organically funded.

We paid cash for the new brewhouse out of sales revenue.

That's awesome you are able to do that, every brewer I've talked to says at some point they have to borrow money and by the time they pay things off they are borrowing more for another upgrade so I assumed you had hit that point as 15bbl is getting into it pretty good. I'm truly impressed you've done so well, so again my congrats to you and your partners. What do you think has been the best part of success, word of mouth, quality, location, lack of competition, etc?

 

[jbaysurfer]

Hey stranger. Who's your manufacturer for your 15BBL system? What sized fermenters? I know a guy who's got a 15bbl Specific system coming at the end of this month.

Edit: By the way. Congrats on your success and pending expansion. Best of luck!

 

[Cape Brewing]

With the larger sized batches you'll be brewing, will you need a new spent grain plan?


TD

Most likely yeah... We have a local pig farmer who takes our grain but once we move up to the 15 bbl system, it'll be a whole different kettle of fish. We have had a number of farms reach out to us looking for spent grain so we're not too concerned about getting rid of it.

 

[Cape Brewing]

That's awesome you are able to do that, every brewer I've talked to says at some point they have to borrow money and by the time they pay things off they are borrowing more for another upgrade so I assumed you had hit that point as 15bbl is getting into it pretty good. I'm truly impressed you've done so well, so again my congrats to you and your partners. What do you think has been the best part of success, word of mouth, quality, location, lack of competition, etc?

This could be a whole long thread in of itself but... We have had a very specific approach to the business side of this whole deal and we've stuck to it. Luckily it has worked really well for US. Would it be the best solution for another brewery? Maybe, maybe not, but we think it is dead on for us.

We refuse to have a big debt obligation hanging over our heads. If that means dampening back our potential growth rate... so be it. The way we see it, if you take out a ton of debt and grow really fast, then you are simply forking all of that profit margin over in debt service anyway, so the lender is enjoying your growth rate. Then, the real down side is if you take out all of that debt and there is an unexpected blip in revenue for any reason at all... now you're looking at trying to manage a huge debt without the revenue you thought you had.

Nah... We'll march along doing just what we're doing.

There are a ton of very successful breweries that have gone heavy with debt so don't get me wrong... I'm not saying it's a "bad" way. I'm just saying it's not the way we are doing things.

 

[Cape Brewing]

Hey stranger. Who's your manufacturer for your 15BBL system? What sized fermenters? I know a guy who's got a 15bbl Specific system coming at the end of this month.

:

We're using O'Neills out of Conn. They are really close (in relative terms), their equipment comes with very positive reviews, and their lead time is only about 100 days so it was kind of a no brainer.

All 15bbl fermenters. We currently make 13-14 beers and, for our situation, don't see the need to double batch into one fermenter. We are likely going to simply have the carb stones mounted in the fermenters and not bother with dedicated brites.

Congrats on the new equip.

Our GC just started cutting up the floor for our drains a couple days ago.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1420597219.410276.jpg

 

[jbaysurfer]

^ now THAT'S the kind of pictures I like seeing. Nice on ya. Would like to try one of your beers someday....

100 days is impressive. Out west here almost every manufacturer is 120+ days, and few of them ever hit their deadlines spot on....but I think breweries are factoring that in these days. My original delivery date was Jan 7th, but the delay just means there's 3 less weeks I've got to store the things before install.

 

[limulus]

Congratulations on your success. I just read/skimmed this entire thread and have to say I am quite impressed with your business plan and the way it all worked out for you. I have considered a similar approach several times (keeping my day job and sharing brew duty with partners). The big problem here is our laws don't allow self distribution and no on-site sales of pints or growlers via a tasting room if you are not a brewpub.

The last photo of the new drains going in really speaks volumes about your expansion. I know that kind of work does not come cheap so I hope you get everything installed and running ahead of schedule!

 

[Cape Brewing]

I wish I could sit back and say, "Oh yeah... we're doing tremedously awesome and it's all because we're super geniuses and have a tremendous game plan".

Reality is.. yes, we are very very proud of what we have accomplished and we think things have been a "success" so far... but it's been a mountain of very hard work (two years worth so far) and we're still on a very small scale. So... it's not like we're a bunch of Jim Koch's driving around in Ferraris. That and while we really like how we have gone about things, we've also had a few significant things fall into our laps out of just pure dumb luck.

The perfect example is our tap room. We started the brewery (production) in January of 2013 and, at the time, didn't really have a tap room on our radar screen as it was illegal in Mass for breweries to have "full pour tap rooms" (customers can come in, sit at the bar and have a pint).

Out of no where and completely unexpected to us, the State changed the law in, I think, mid 2013 allowing existing license holders to suddenly have "full pour tap rooms". We actually had the license to legally do it for a couple of months before we even realilzed it.... and that change has been a MASSSSSSIVE difference maker. Having the tap room and having do as well as it has been doing is what is fueling 97% of our growth. We would be slogging through much much longer on our little "no debt" mantra if that hadn't fallen into our laps.

So... I think it has really been a combination of a lot of things that have all fallen nicely into place so far.

Hopefully that string of luck continues.

 

[paulthenurse]

So far so good. Been open now twice with some nice crowds. Now we focus on expanding the brewhouse. View attachment 216156


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You need a plaque to honor my corner.

 

[Cape Brewing]

There is no plaque that could ever be produced that would do it justice Sir. Even a jewel encrusted plaque cast in pure platinum would be an insult to the divinity of the space.

 

[paulthenurse]

I agree but I appreciate that you're on a budget.

 

[cujocon]

Thread just stole 2 hours of my workday...Thanks!

 

[paulthenurse]

Man, talk about a total waste of your employers time and money.

 

[Cape Brewing]

Been a while since I updated this thread and I figured it was time for a quick update.

So...

This happened....

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1438093276.248645.jpg

30bbl HLT, 15bbl MT and 15 bbl BK. mill and augers set up so no carrying grain up top.

 

[Cape Brewing]

We put these in there too... (Not sure how I don't have a pic of them in there).

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1438093447.065819.jpg

For now we just went with two 15 bbl fermenters that we can double as brites as well.

We wanted to get the entire build out done and paid for and then we'll start lining up more fermenters. We figured two, coupled with our current small little 3bbl set-up should hold us over while we bring additional fermenters on line.

 

[bob1852]

Paul helped unload them off the truck?

 

[Cape Brewing]

We don't let Paul near anything. The handsome guy in the background is F-Dub... My partner. BUSINESS partner.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.