This Home brewer was elected to start an informal microbrewery...HELP!!

[Hophead04]

Hey all, I just moved to Santiago Chile about 6 months ago and am starting to brew again. I used to brew 5 gallon batches at my old house in the states, and needless to say I loved it. Long story short I was offered the opportunity to run a small microbrewery (which will just be used to supply beer for co-workers for now) which will almost definitely go commercial in about 2 years.

My Question: Are there any tips you guys have for a guy who is just starting to brew large batches of beer? I am talking about 50 gallons right now, but down the road it could be a few hundred at a time. For now lets stick to 50 gallons. Do recipes scale up? Do I need extra equipment that I did not need as a 5-gallon brewer? Such equipment is an aeration stone, more advance wort cooling techniques, etc.

Anyways, thanks for any help..cheers!!

 

[weirdboy]

Hops utilization does NOT scale linearly. You can/will get much better utilization as you scale up. Your efficiency is likely to be a bit better for larger batches, too, but generally speaking you ought to just plan a "surprise batch" for your first run on a new, bigger system, and design a recipe where you don't really mind if you overshoot or undershoot your target gravities, bitterness, etc. so that you can use those numbers to dial in your system for subsequent batches.


You will want a brite tank for carbonating your beer unless you plan to bottle and naturally carb everything. Most breweries (around here, at least) use a large aeration stone in the brite tank to carbonate the beer at relatively high pressure, like 30 PSI, which takes only a few hours compared to the traditional homebrewer methods which can take a couple of weeks. You will also probably want to use the aeration stone for oxygenating the wort before pitching.

 

[VTDuffman]

I have nothing of value for your question personally...

But the Brew Strong podcast had a whole series on Jamil's journey from homebrewer to pro brewer. I haven't listened to it, but it could be of some help for you.

 

[TheBreweryUnderground]

I'll be passing through there in two weeks or so, maybe we should grab a drink or something.

 

[weirdboy]

One other thing that's quite different from homebrew scale is milling grain. I don't know about regulations there, but you NEED good ventilation around your your mill and you want to keep it as far from the fermenters and any heating elements as possible. The amount of dust you can generate milling on larger scales can cause explosions, and of course potential for contamination is always an issue, too.

 

[Hophead04]

Thank you! I will take a look at them

 

[Hophead04]

Hops utilization does NOT scale linearly. You can/will get much better utilization as you scale up. Your efficiency is likely to be a bit better for larger batches, too, but generally speaking you ought to just plan a "surprise batch" for your first run on a new, bigger system, and design a recipe where you don't really mind if you overshoot or undershoot your target gravities, bitterness, etc. so that you can use those numbers to dial in your system for subsequent batches.


You will want a brite tank for carbonating your beer unless you plan to bottle and naturally carb everything. Most breweries (around here, at least) use a large aeration stone in the brite tank to carbonate the beer at relatively high pressure, like 30 PSI, which takes only a few hours compared to the traditional homebrewer methods which can take a couple of weeks. You will also probably want to use the aeration stone for oxygenating the wort before pitching.

Thank you! For right now we are going to create a few kegerators to store/dispense the beer, with a few corny kegs for actually holding the beer. Thanks for the tips!

 

[Hophead04]

Thank you everyone for all your responses! If any of you guys have any more tips that would be great!

Cheers!