Philippine based Brit homebrewer, thinking about a microbrewery

[blueseamonkey]

Hello all.

I am a British doctor living and working in the Philippines. I have made my own wines for years but only recently started making beers - initially with extract but after my last supplies run out I will be moving to AG brewing.

There's only about 15 homebrewers (making beer, as opposed to wine) in the whole country, plus 2 tiny microbreweries and 1 brewpub. But interest in craft beer is beginning to take off, with mainly American craft ales being sold at very high prices in a growing number of places. Both microbreweries sell out each batch before they can brew another.

For that reason (and because I'm enjoying it) I am considering setting up my own microbrewery as well. Not immediately, in perhaps a year or 2 - when I am a bit more experienced with homebrewing.
I've been doing market research in the area I plan to setup and it looks like I will have no problem at all getting bars/resorts etc to stock and sell the beer. The legal setup is not too tricky here, or not much more difficult than setting up any other kind of business anyway. The bulk of the ingredients will have to come from China as there's nothing available locally, (with specialty hops and malts from Europe or the US,) but according to the other homebrewers here, the quality of the Chinese malts and hops are pretty good.

I was thinking of improvising my own equipment, or getting it fabricated locally, but I have noticed there are a lot of factories now in China selling professional brewing equipment. Has anyone on here tried it yet? I've asked for some preliminary quotes and it looks like for about USD $20-30,000 I can get a 200-300L system capable of 3 or 4 batches a week. In Britain or the US, that might be too small to bother with, but most of the costs are so low here, it looks like it might be worth it, and should turn a decent profit.

Anyway - its all dreams at the moment, but I am thinking one day of giving up medicine and going into brewing full-time.

 

[Dynachrome]

How is your grain and hops supply?

I'm jealous. You have a captive audience.

I live in Wisconsin. Everybody brews beer.

 

[blueseamonkey]

How is your grain and hops supply?

I'm jealous. You have a captive audience.

I live in Wisconsin. Everybody brews beer.

Grain & hops supply locally is non-existent at the moment, it will all have to come from China (or India.) I've heard the quality is fairly good, and they seem to have plenty available, as long as you're willing to buy in big quantities.

Homebrewing amounts are harder to come by, and most of the homebrewers are importing from homebrew shops in the states (at great cost.) I may end up setting up a supply business as a sideline to help out the local brewing community depending on how reliable my supply is. The big commercial brewers refuse to share. A few people have experimented with malting the barley that is available locally, intended as animal feed - I'm a bit worried about consistency with that so will probably import.

It looked like I was going to have the market almost completely to myself (apart from commercial lagers) in the area I planned to set up but I've recently heard one other person is also setting up a brewery there brewing 1500L / batch. I was hugely disappointed at first, but I've now met the guy, it sounds like we will be able to cooperate on grain shipments etc, plus his taste in beer is quite different to mine so we will probably have very different brews. The area is very popular with both foreign and local tourists and we are thinking of trying to market it as the craft beer destination in the Philippines.

Even with only a 200L / batch brewery mine will still be the 2nd largest independent brewery in the country (the only bigger ones are 2 huge commercials - San Miguel and Asia Brewery, then this other man I mentioned above.) so there's plenty of room to grow!

 

[Dynachrome]

Other brewers can be an ally. Here in town we have three. They have different brews and share a lot of the same customers.

Viva-la-differance.