Muddy Creek Brewing Co. Brewery Build- Start to Finish Thread

[MuddyCreek]

Well, tonight we have our soft opening.

I'll take photos of actual people IN the taproom tasting beer. I'll also provide some feedback about what folks said. (I'll even be honest about some of the negative feedback.) I'm hopeful that the unwashed masses will be very pleased with the products. I have purposefully invited several of the "beer snobs" from our local brewer's club. I fully expect (and I asked them to be honest and point out areas of improvement in their opinion) some critical commentary from that group about some of the beers. The plan tonight was to invite between 35 and 45 people who helped out with the brewery in one way or another. This is a "free event." Guests can have up to 2 pints and 1 'taster' of root beer or lemonade. (The lemonade is carbing right now. I'm hopeful that it will be fully carbed by tonight. Perhaps not quite. We'll see.)

I have a team of tasters who will regularly go through our product line and check for consistency and "servability". But I've mentioned that before. Just the nuts and bolts of maintaining product consistency. I can do everything on the brewery end to make the same product but ultimately you have to have people with educated palettes do some tasting and tell you "Yup. Tastes the same!"

As for marketing, we made a command decision to "flat-price" everything. One of the partners wanted to use "price-foo" where we were pricing things at $19.95 type prices because "psychologically people see that as below $20". However that requires us to keep change in the till where a $20 tee-shirt doesn't make us come up with nickels. The rest of us convinced the partner that we're all smart enough to figure out that $19.95 is really $20 minus a nickel.

We have put the finishing touches on our "Fishin' Hole" (Our mug club.) I think they're going to charge $75 for it. For that you get a growler + fill a pint glass + fill (pint stays on premises, of course,) and you get 1 free pint fill per week. The genius of it is that most folks won't simply come in for 1 pint. They'll likely stay and get a couple so we'll probably get at least another pint sale of out it. Better yet, those folks will also probably bring in a friend or two when they fill up their free pint so we'll ideally get some other sales as well. Of course you'll also get a free pint on your birthday.

So, the glassware is worth $18.50
The initial fills are worth anywhere from $12 to $13
and the subsequent yearly fills are worth as much as $212

So, for $75 you get a max value worth $243.50

We think it's a good deal. We expect the "Fishin' Hole" will sell out pretty quickly.

 

[UWDawg13]

From a consumer stand point, I would love a brewery I frequented often to have a mug club with a free weekly pint, and I know I would go in for more than just one.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

From a consumer stand point, I would love a brewery I frequented often to have a mug club with a free weekly pint, and I know I would go in for more than just one.

I would honestly just have my free pint. I'm a bit paranoid about driving with the cdl after drinking... but, thst meaning said, it is highly likely I would take a growler home to enjoy. so that would be a win for sales. Plus I would feel good about it. And it seems that if the consumer feels good about buying then they will buy more.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, that went well. Of course we were giving away free beer, so what does a fella expect?

Nonetheless - we invited about 45 people, got 60+ and we received very positive reviews on both the taproom and the products. I paid particular attention to my taster group. (I invited 4 of my 6 tasters.) They said all of the beer on tap was good. One fellow who has a sharp pallette for phenol could detect a touch of it in the wheat and in the I.P.A.

I took the note and I'll check my records to see where they were feremented at. (I know they were supposed to be fermented at 64 degrees but I'll see if there were hiccups in the temp range.) Also we take external temp readings as opposed to internal and our fermenters are 100 gallon tanks, so it's entirely possible that we're fermenting several degrees higher inside. I may need to drop the temperature a couple degrees to clean up the phenol in those two beers. (Again, the fellow who caught it just barely noticed it, nobody else did all night and the other tasters couldn't detect it, but if I can avoid it altogether by dropping my fermentation temp a degree or two, I can take the note.)

Another note that all my tasters agreed on is that it wouldn't hurt to up my carb levels across the board excepting for the wheat all by about 3 or 4 psi. So, we'll do that this afternoon. We have our second soft opening tomorrow evening so the kegs ought to have some time to carb up just a bit more for that.

Other than that, the "regular folk" absolutely loved all our products including the root beer. We weren't serving much of the lemonade as it wasn't quite carbed up yet.

We received some very good reviews about the taproom. The partners and volunteers who have been helping out with it have done a GREAT job and it's looking wonderful.

Now for the fun financial news. Last night was a "free" soft opening. That does NOT mean we didn't make any money. We did open up the "Fishing Hole" for sale. We subsequently sold 12 new memberships on the spot. We grossed $900 and netted $642.

Wednesday we hope to sell a few more Fishin' Hole memberships but more importantly lay the foundations for some sales accounts with local restaurants and taverns. We already told people last night that their primary mission is to start asking people at all the local restaurants "Do you have Muddy Creek on tap?"

Here are a couple better photos of the taproom from just before the soft opening last night. We also had a couple taken with people there and I'll try to update with those when I get them sent to me later on today.

Oh, last thing, in the early running, right out of the blocks, Skinny Cow I.P.A. was the favorite. It edged out Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout which came in ahead of Dirty Blonde Ale. We'll see which is the favorite over the long haul but in the first 10 yards, there's your leaders.

 

[kombat]

One fellow who has a sharp pallette for phenol could detect a touch of it in the wheat and in the I.P.A. [...] we take external temp readings as opposed to internal and our fermenters are 100 gallon tanks, so it's entirely possible that we're fermenting several degrees higher inside.

This may not be the cause in your case, but your comment reminded me of an example I read in a brewing book about a brewery in Texas that was experiencing a similar quality control issue. In their case, the root cause was that it turned out they were filling their fermenters to a level above the top of the glycol cooling lines, such that the top few gallons of the batch wasn't receiving sufficient cooling. Since heat rises, the hotter-than-desired beer didn't sink back down and mix with the rest to cool down, but rather stayed at the top of the fermenter and fermented at a higher temperature than the rest of the batch, producing off-flavours in the whole batch.

The solution was to simply not fill the fermenter quite so full, such that the surface of the beer was at/below the topmost portion of the glycol cooling lines surrounding the fermenter.

That may not be the case in your situation, I just wanted to point it out on the off-chance it might be. If nothing else, it's one thing you can rule out.

 

[MuddyCreek]

We don't have glycol cooled fermenters Kombat. We use ambient cooled fermenters. (That's a hi-tech way of saying "We use a temperature controlled room." This admittedly leaves some "fudge room" in our fermentation range and that's likely where James (My taster,) is picking up the traces of phenol.

I'm going to try dropping the temperature a couple degrees on the next batches of these particular products and have him try them again and I'll be interested to see if he picks it up again. If so I may need to pay more attention to my yeast and my processes altogether. If not well we may have solved it and I get to pat myself on the back for being foresighted enough to use tasters and trust their opinion.

(Let's just hope I don't sprain my elbow patting myself on the back. I DID produce noticeable trace amounts of phenol, after all.)

 

[OldWorld]

Not having cooled tanks is going to be your biggest problem. Dropping the temp might help, but what do you do when God decides to have a warmer summer?

My best advice is to utilize the phenolics you are given and adjust recipes to compliment them. It's not a flaw if you can make it house character.

Yeast management is going to be the biggest hurdle. Don't be scared to try mixed cultures. You might even want to consider making the Saison yeast strain a house yeast. It can be pitched at 85 degrees and the further aerobic activity won't kill the yeast.

Laws of physics apply. The thermal mass of your cooling system can't possibly penetrate the walls of the stainless tanks. So a degree or two might only have a small effect.

Give it yer all and don't give up.

 

[jiMithing83]

You mentioned your yeast guy is ChemE, not sure of the effect on yeast but agitation will reduce that thermal gradient to almost nothing. CSTRs have a much more uniform temperature than stagnant reactors.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Soft opening photos...

Here are a few photos from the "Friends and Family" soft opening.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Tonight we have the "Business" soft opening. We'll be charging for pints this evening.

IE, the rubber meets the road.

 

[NewJersey]

Rake in the loot! Wish I lived anywhere near you.
Can't wait to see a little more variety!

 

[ImNoExpert]

I hope things are going well! Best of luck!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, this thread has almost run it's course fellas.

We had our business soft opening last night. We invited restaurant and bar managers and other local business folks from around the area and as I mentioned, we charged.

It was a limited opening, we did as well as we could have hoped for. We're planning on donating half our pint sales to the local food bank. In the end we made $1200 on the night. We really couldn't be happier. Again we received great reviews on the beer and the atmosphere and two local restaurants, including a couple major chains have told us they will carry us as soon as we are ready to distribute to them.

All in all, a success. Tonight we host the local brew-club for a meeting. They'll bring in their home brew and sample some of ours and tomorrow our grand opening.

Here are a few photos from my crappy phone from last nights event.

 

[ruger988]

Thanks for taking the time to make this thread. I'm getting ready to head down the same road and this will be a great asset!!

Congrats on getting everything up and going and having such good reviews so far!

 

[Helly]

Congrats on making it this far. I'm happy for you and wish you great luck with the grand opening and beyond. Thanks for sharing.

 

[jiMithing83]

It's been a pleasure living vicariously through you. Best of luck moving forward, and if I'm ever in your party of the country I'll be sure to stop in for a pint or seven.

 

[maurtis]

Huge congratulations! I can only dream of having the guts you do to take on such an endeavor. The place looks amazing, I wish you and your crew all the best.

 

[MuddyCreek]

One of the members has asked for more information specifically on my fermenters. While I have tried to be as honest and forthcoming as possible, it's kinda like the alcoholic who is willing to say "Hi, my name is John.", but isn't quite ready to show you where ALL his bottles are.

I have mentioned that we use plastic conicals. We did that because at our startup level that was the only choice we had really that made any sense financially. We knew it was a controversial choice and we hoped we wouldn't regret it. So far all of our beer including our 40 gallon test batches through our 1/2 full scale batches have been fermented in the plastic conicals. (they are just short of 4 bbl capacity fermenters, 120 gallon to be specific.) We push them to about 90 gallons max when we fill them for fermenting. When you see photos of them, you'll see how exciting and terrifying it gets when these monsters are filled up with 90 gallons (750 lbs give or take of beer,). And yet, we've never had a problem.

I have thus far refrained from posting pictures of my ghetto fermenters. I will take a couple today or tomorrow when I brew and put them up in the interest of full disclosure. The truth is, through all our batches they have made good and consistent beer. I am not displeased with them particularly.

That said, I will upgrade as soon a I can afford it. We've found that they don't seal nearly as well as we'd like them to and they were really a pain to get valves and rollers into/on etc. We've wanted to paint them black for the longest time but haven't HAD time yet.

What I WANTED to do originally, but never got around to was to put a thermoprobe inside the fermenters so I could track an internal temp and monitor that way. It became obvious as we simply tried to get valves in the bottom of these things that we were going to be fighting a water-tight problem so that idea went away pretty early in the game.

We use "Cool-Bot's" to beef up our industrial AC units and make them super-coolers for our lagering room and our aging room. We've also got one in our fermenting room but it's not really necessary. (Although, I could also lager in there if I wanted to with the Cool-Bot installed.) I generally keep the temperature in the fermenting room 3 to 4 degrees cooler than the target temperature for the ferment. So far we've hit all our FG's within 2 to 3 points so we're fairly happy. However I recognize this is hardly good science and when we do start to see inconsistency in our product this will be the first place to look.

Now, I said I wanted to upgrade as soon as possible and although I've pointed out that I'm relatively happy with our fermenters despite the difficulty in setting them up, now that they're up and going one would think I'd be OK with keeping them for awhile moving forward. Here are my reasons for wanting to upgrade when I can.

In a nutshell, what we've discovered is that although the company who makes and distributes them markets the tanks as "beer and wine fermenters" there are some issues with air-leaks that I'm not altogether happy with. Whenever we have a good strong krausen, we find a nasty mess on the outside of the tanks where krausen has ass-ploded out the lid seal and all over the top of the fermenter. Despite our blow-off tube not enough pressure is being allowed to release and we're seeing some leakage.

How do we fight this natural air-leak issue? Through over-pitching and aggressive fermentation. But I can see the writing on the wall. Eventually I'm going to have a bad batch. So far we've had good beer and no problems but one day I'm going to draw some beer and it's going to be bad. Furthermore, we have these small 120 gallon fermenters to go with our 10 bbl system. I need to use 3 of them to take one of our batches and they still can't quite take a full batch.

So, we'll start slowly, buying matched pairs so we can put a couple SS fermenter in the fermenting room and a couple in the lagering room. That way we can ferment and then cold-crash. After that we can roll the beer into the brite tanks and we should be able to go from grain to kegs in 10 to 12 days.

Of course after that we'll have to wait a few weeks for some decent aging, but the savings in time that we're getting on those brite tanks is a freaking miracle. I LOVE me some brite tanks. We want one more for our root beer. Then we can can it.

Anyway, I'm not Anti-plastic fermenter. They've done a great job for us and I see us using them for at least another 6 months or so while we phase into the nice SS ones. They have been very cost effective and as long as you are gentle, keep them in the dark and clean them carefully they do the job just like your good old 5 gallon bucket will.

In the long run though a guy's going to have to upgrade to something that gives him better control and more options. That's what we'll do when we can free up the 15 to 20k it's going to take to get 4 5 bbl SS fermenters in here.

I'll post photos of the current fermenters. Try to be gentle. Don't use my honesty as a weapon. ; -)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Let the mass beatings begin...

The fermenters in all their hideous glory.

Now, I know what you're thinking in picture 2 there... "IS THAT GUNK?" No. It's a plastic food grade nut used to bolt the valve into the bottom of the conical and it's covered with some silicone. (You can see another one on another fermenter in photo 3.)

Panic not, dear readers.

 

[beergolf]

Hey, they did what you needed them to do. They got you opened and up and running. They may not last forever but so what. I think if you just plan on replacing them when you got some more cash flow you should be good.

This whole thread has been amazing. You did lay it all out there. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Hope the place stays full with thirsty beer lovers.. Cheers.

 

[MuddyCreek]

We finished our opening weekend. It went very well to put it mildly. I think we went through somewhere in the zone of 16 full kegs. I'm not sure how many of the other 5 regular kegs are used now. So I say over the weekend we did somewhere in the zone of 8.5 to 10 bbls.

Right now all the products are fairly even. The I.P.A. is enjoying a slight lead over the stout, but the Amber is right in there. Meanwhile the blonde and the wheat ale are staying in striking distance.

We were packed from open to close on Friday night, enjoyed a good house on Saturday and a very steady stream through Sunday. I'm very interested to see what a Monday brings us. Presumably this will be a "slow day". Of course we're still brand new so we may get a good deal of traffic being the "darlings". I have to get some more beer kegged asap as they're going through it.

 

[todd_k]

Congratulations!

 

[Roadie]

Wow, it's been a long time coming and glad you have officially opened. Best wishes and good luck for continued packed houses!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, the tax man cometh...

See all the fun and games comes with a price. You have to keep track of all the materials that go into your products including the hops. (It aint all about the water and malt!) Then you have to keep records of how much wort you produce for fermentation, how much you produce for consumption and how much is actually consumed.

THEN you are taxed for what goes OUT your brewery and you must meticulously track your "carryover" vs your "spillage". And they take that **** seriously. You can get away with some fudging here and there but you better have a damn good reason for those two kegs that went mysteriously missing in June if you know what I mean.

All the product that goes out of your doors is taxable material that the federal govt. gets a piece of. Fair enough. A BIG part of your future job as a brewer is righting down meticulous notes about how much of what went into your brew, how much came out and how much went into peoples' bellies.

And for every drop that you sold, gave away or accidentally spilled... Well there's a tax for that. And my quarterly report is due in a couple weeks.

 

[Baja_Brewer]

This is fantastic. Thanks so much for providing an inside view of what it takes for getting off the ground. Best of luck to you.

 

[MuddyCreek]

I had a very gratifying talk with a local brewer today.

We have a fellow down the road who has won some medals for his beer. He and the an assistant brewer and the owners came in last night and had a couple pints and let us know that they enjoyed the products as they left.

(Of course I knew they were going to be polite in public, so I waited until today to call the brewer personally and let him know that I could take some constructive criticism and please let me know what he really thought.)

In a nutshell he said the truly thought all the beers were very good. He said the IPA was a bit chunky, which I agree with. He asked how I was filtering, I told him, we didn't filter that batch at all, it's merely cold-crashed and that I'm using dry hopping with pellet hops in the cold crash. (He said they do that as well but not with pellets.) However he suggested putting the pellets into the fermenter while there's a point or so left and letting the pellet hops drop into the yeast cake as it finishes out. While we'll lose a bit of the hops aroma that way we will likely save some of the "grunge".

Our other option is to use an inline filter (which we've already purchased,) when we run from the brite tank to the kegs. I think we're going to try that because I don't want to lose any of my hops finish on the IPA. If we still have an issue then I might go the other route or simply move to a different hops format.

Anyway, when you have one of the best brewers in the state telling you your beer is very good, you gotta feel pretty good about that.

He's the guy who gave me some suggestions to increase my efficiency when I first started out and now I've jumped my points up by 10 or more on every batch. He also said he'd be happy to come down to Butte when I brew and simply hang out and watch my process and give me any feedback he could to help out.

Awesome guy. If you're ever in Montana and get a chance to go to Phillipsburg Brewing Co. in Phillipsburg, do it. They make some fine beer there and are about the friendliest folks you can find.

 

[gl_az]

I've heard it said that in order to be a good brewer you need to be a great accountant. Congrats on the success so far, very inspirational.

 

[Calfj60]

I just finished reading this from beginning to end. I must thank you for taking the time to document this from begining to current. You have been so honest and forthright I really appreciate it. Best of luck to you and your partners!

 

[Goon]

I just read this entire thread in one day while trying to be as productive as possible at work or course. I am amazed by the whole process and what it took you to take a dream and turn into a reality. I can't believe you had enough time in the day to manage everything. Great job and I wish you all the success in the world.

 

[MuddyCreek]

That's quite a marathon read Goon. I hope you don't have a headache.

We're up for our 2nd weekend. Ours first full week has been pretty good to us. My tasting crew is organized and I have a fellow in charge who's setting up a google-form for the team to fill out when they come and do the tastings. They'll be able to give me feedback which I can look at online and refer to by batch dates. Then I can refer to the specific batches and see if I can track what they're seeing with my notes and come up with what I want to do in terms of necessary response (if warranted.)

I let him know that right off the bat I'm primarily interested in product consistency. We've got some people very happy with our products so I want to be sure I'm producing the same stuff week in and out for a few months. Once we've got that issue nailed down and I know we're good there, I told him I want to start very specifically focusing on style guidelines for a couple of the products so we can start determining whether or not we want to compete them. (Ya, I admit, it would be a huge marketing bonus for us obviously to hope one day to do well in a regional competition.) Two of our tasters are certified judges so I'm hoping they can help me dial in a bit to better meet judging requirements although ultimately you're looking at a subjective process regardless.

Tomorrow we brew Dirty Blonde and I continue to try to stockpile enough beer to survive St. Patty's day in Butte America, which is about the closest thing to the end of the world you're ever likely to see. However that can literally be a 10k day for us in sales. So... we're gonna store up some beer for it.

Our chemist is working on black and tans, mixing our stout on nitro with our blonde, he's also trying to come up with a perfect Shandy mix using our carbonated lemonade and the blonde. (His wife is named Sandi so we'll likely call ours a "Sandi".)

We'll offer those for St. Patty's day as well as another potential surprise offering that I'm noooot quite ready to let out of the bag yet.

;-)

 

[Goon]

Muddy, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. It was like a reading a novel, I couldn't put it down. All of your posts were well written and very detailed. You even took the time to read the thread and answer questions.

 

[WilliamSlayer]

Congratulations! Great read.

 

[JINKS]

Coming on the 17 to try some of your brews.

 

[ubnserved]

Absolutely great thread.... and this one even had follow through. Thanks for all the great information it will definitely be an eye opener for those who are wanting to take the plunge.

 

[SteelManCM]

I finally finished this thread. Congratulations on the Happy Ending! At the same time, it's just the beginning.

Thank you for being so forthright with the information.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Muddy, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. It was like a reading a novel, I couldn't put it down. All of your posts were well written and very detailed. You even took the time to read the thread and answer questions.

I used to be an English Major a lifetime ago. It's difficult for me to write really really badly. (Though I still manage it often enough.)

 

[MuddyCreek]

I'm updating a couple of my spreadsheets. Particularly my bittering worksheet that helps me figure out the amount of hops to add to my large batches as well as my soft-drink sheet that helps me manage scaling for the Root beer and lemonade.

However, I am also working on the master spreadsheet that we used to figure out if the brewery would be a viable cost-effective business in the first place.

We originally (Ok, I originally,) worked it up when I had pretty much no idea whatsoever how much beer we'd be able to sell or how much it would take in terms of employee help in the brewery or the taproom. I had virtually no idea what we'd have to pay for excise taxes, for rent, for utilities etc.

In short almost everything was a S.W.A.G. But I knew that. So I was very conservative in order to prove to myself that the brewery could, in fact, make a profit. Not only did I dramatically under-estimate how much beer we may sell, I over-estimated what we may pay for utilities, insurance etc. Then just to be sure I added a huge "Buffer" each month that was our "You have no idea what you're getting into" insurance.

That's what we took to the bank and they accepted it as being on-point enough and conservative enough that they were willing to go ahead and back us.

Now that we're actually up and running and I'm starting to get real numbers to plug in, I can actually retroactively update the thing with more realistic numbers and see what a real projection looks like on it. The good news is, our conservative estimates were precisely that, extremely conservative. We're selling probably 2 or 3 times as much product as I expected. Admittedly, our staffing has gone up a great deal over what I planned as well, however our margin is great enough that our increased sales dramatically over-rides that.

Let's keep in mind of course that the owners still aren't getting paid anything. We don't expect to for some time. We would rather pay down the loans, upgrade the equipment and generally secure the future of the business. We're just barely into things and we fully intend to reinvest every dime into the brewery in order to keep the customers happy. So far we've been blessed with great reviews and very happy customers. We have restaurants around town clamoring to put our products on tap and we want to keep it that way. The best way to do that is to not get overly aggressive and slowly upgrade our equipment and processes.

On the way + side, as owners who have invested a TON of personal finances into the brewery over the last year, since the brewery has thus far shown a huge and tremendous loss on the books to this point, we can count on a very enjoyable tax return in a few months. We're talking "Should I pay off the Honda or take the family to Hawaii?" type of return. (Sigh... I'll pay off the Honda... I really hate debt.)

Anyway, over the first 8 days of being open, we went through 16 bbls of product clean. (By that I mean that's the empties that came down from upstairs. We still have quite a few partials upstairs so I'd guess we probably went through closer to 18 to 20 bbls altogether.) That's just in the taproom without any outside distribution yet. It's been exciting if exhausting.

I suppose it's a good problem to have.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Been quiet for awhile. We've been getting ready for tomorrow. St. Patty's day in Butte is quite a spectacle. So far things have gone well. Good reviews and good customer returns. I'm getting ready to add another beer on tap and I expect by the weekend we'll open up our first accounts with 2 or 3 local restaurants. I need to do some research and make sure we are charging appropriately for our kegs and that we have proper contracts set up for our accounts.

I know that a couple restaurants want a 2 to 3 taps on hand. (That will bring us in somewhere in the zone of $600 to $900 extra for each rotation they cycle.) I don't know how quickly they'll go through them though. We'll have to see. Of course we have to reimburse for returned kegs etc. (This is why self-distributing is a serious p.i.ta.) You have to weigh the kegs going out, mark them down and have a signed sheet with the client and then weigh them coming back in and have a signed sheet so there's an agreement about the beer distributed on the client site. (Good stuff for you guys who want to do this in the future, I expect...) Then you can calculate you amount distributed both for your sales and for your taxable output.

(You'll soon learn that your entire life starts to revolve around calculating what you can be taxed upon.)

 

[xcxgh]

Good luck! What size system?

 

[MuddyCreek]

10 bbl