Questions about small-batch commercial brewing

[pfooti]

Hi board.

My wife recently said to me: "you should do a Beer CSA". The brilliance of this suggestion struck a chord with me.

Do any of you have any insight or advice about doing small-scale commercial brewing? I imagine that there's a fair bit of regulation and oversight, and this probably varies from state to state. I'm not interested in doing a full-on commercial operation, but if I could get 5-10 people interested in my brew I could do something where they pay me ahead of time, which I invest in hops, grain, and so on. Then I deliver some number of growlers to them every month.

If I started and stayed small, I'm sure I could (a) pull this off and (b) make enough profits to reinvest into new equipment. Which is all I really want: an audience, an excuse, and a source of cool new stuff. The business plan end is rather easy, and I've already had some experience with starting a small business. I've just never tried to start a small business as a home brewing operation.

 

[jgardner6]

The only problem is making enough for the taxes.

 

[pfooti]

Taxes look feasible, and I'm pretty sure I could get people to be interested enough (and on a VERY small scale of 10-20 subscribers at first) for the overall system to break even or funnel some small amount of money each month into infrastructure upgrades for a while.

Deeper digging indicates that I might have to do a LOT of work getting permits together. Luckily, in CA craft brewers are allowed to self-distribute, which saves a LOT of headache there.