How big of a Brewing System?

A lot of potential brewery owners I talk to all want nice big shiny brewing equipment. When you are a home brewer, it’s sort of your dream, like many young men dream of crotch-high exotic sports cars. However the reality of the brewery you will own doesn't really square with those dreams.

In fact of all the students I have had that have gone on to open breweries, I can only think of one that actually needed a larger brew set up than I recommended. But that’s not a bad problem to have, right?

Every year I look at the brewery production numbers put out by the Brewers Association, and every year the story seems about the same: 93% of brewpubs and tasting room breweries make less than 1,000 bbl’s per year. In fact a very large number of those produce less than 500 bbl’s.

What this means is you would be fine with a 7 BBL system brewing once per week in the off season, and then maybe twice per week during the busy summer season. This could be done with just two fermenters depending on the styles of beers you are producing and what yeast strain you use. But three would give you more flexibility. Then, a nice cold room with about 5 or 6 serving tanks and you are good to go.

Your brew schedule during the summer would be brewing twice, and doing brew prep and transfers twice, and still have a day for cleaning and paper work. That’s a five day work week. The rest of the year you really only have a three day work week. In addition, it’s done without the need for an assistant.

So, sparing no expense, a brewing system would look like this.

Some of this is of course Frankenbrew, like the mash tun, but more of it is new or high quality used equipment. There’s a lot of it out there now.

The brewing equipment is of course the heart of your brewery. If you can keep this equipment list reasonable, it will bring your break-even point down to something more manageable, compared to if you had opted for a 10 bbl turn-key system with a price tag of 250k.

There are so many keys to having a successful brewery, but one of the most important is a low break even, so having a good balance of equipment that is right for your market is a great starting point.