Squeeze Me

Or, How Small Can You Go?

Let me get a little brewing wonky here just a bit.

We just finished a class (I won’t say where the students are from for privacy reasons) and the students already have a tap room, but are looking for another location for a small brewery.

Just for fun, I suggested to them that I could squeeze a small five to seven barrel system into their existing tap room. I did it, and wanted to share it with you as an exercise in what is possible.

Now, I love having space for brewing as much as the next brewer, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way and you need to make do with what you have. These students are looking for a brewing location, but if that doesn’t pan out, they could still get in the brewing game by using their current location.

Here are the changes that I proposed we make to their current set up.

First the large cooler that held kegs directly behind the bar, would be reduced to only six feet deep. That is large enough for four seven-barrel serving tanks, which take up a lot less room than fourteen kegs in the space of each tank. There is just enough room left over for some miscellaneous kegs. We have a similar configuration in Colorado Boy and it allows us to keep eight beers on tap.

Next, I recommended two Letina tank fermenters. These are only thirty two inches in diameter. You can do lagers in them as well as a full seven-barrels of ale that is thirteen Plato or less: anything higher and you need to reduce your volume so the yeast doesn’t blow out the top - ask me how I know.

The hot liquor tank can be any stainless steel tank. Luckily the students have high ceilings, so I suggested mounting the tank above the mash tun in the corner. Mounting the tank higher will allow them to use gravity for the sparge.

For the mash tun, I sourced a round dairy tank for only $500. A false bottom can be made using slitted pipe that sits in the bottom. I have used this configuration and it works well.

There are two possibilities for the brew kettle. The first would be a direct fire, insulated kettle ( shown in the plans) that could be either five or seven barrels. This would cost about $12,000. Or, Stout Tanks has a five-barrel electric kettle which would do the job.

Grain would have to be stored off-site and bought pre-milled as well.

While this is not ideal - and I can feel some dear readers rolling their eyes - it would still be a sweet little brewery, and if you brewed only once per week, and sold, say seven-barrels per week, you could make a really nice living out of this brewery. I would take this over a corporate job any day.

Brewery Operations Manual -The book based on our immersion course

Colorado Boy SOP - Step by step brew methods we use

The Affordable Brewery - How to piece together an affordable brewing system

Frankenbrew DVD - The original 1995 video. 2