Brew Pub Brewhouse Size Does Matter

Transcript

hello and welcome back I am Augustine Steen oh Iacopelli and you have stumbled upon another episode of what’s brewing with Augustine oh glad to have you here today and for those of you who haven’t tune into an episode for this is a podcast that we put together in conjunction with a brewery more specifically a brew pub that will be opening in Wichita Kansas later this year the year being 2017 and just wanted to touch base today on the idea of brewpub sizes brewhouse is size does matter in this very important decision on a brewhouse for your brewpub or microbrewery if you happen to be a of the mindset that you want to break into the site craft beer industry I like we do its probably your most important are one of your most important decisions is deciding how large your brewhouse will be in your brewpub now there’s a handful of considerations that you need to have some of these we’ve covered in previous episodes but the number one thing is resist the push by others to go big or go home that probably is true and is true I should say if you are opening up a production facility that has to crank out massive amounts of product to break even if your brewpub though in your operating a restaurant in conjunction with that brewpub you don’t have quite the same need to have a massively scaled system and in fact it may be to your advantage to not have that massive massive a system because even though if you scale your a brewhouse down you wind up having to produce more batches of beer but it also allows you to produce a lot more specialty beers specialty beer doesn’t necessarily cost more to make than a standard flight beer but if you say that it’s a specialty beer or a seasonal beer suddenly that become something that not only does the public want to get their hands on because it’s going to be gone soon and there’s a scarcest scarcity that is are created but beyond that it allows you to open up your brewpub for a lower cash outflow which can be very advantageous when trying to get some capital from the bank to finish out your your project for your opening it’s something that we at Augustine oh brewing have really struggled with over the past several months as to exactly what size were to open with we know that we will probably grow to capacity at about 700 to 1100 barrels a year through our brewhouse but we also have to look at for us a growth in terms of beyond our first location to a second location to a third location and so on and so forth and as we grow we also have to think about the fact that we probably at some point are going to bring on a production facility that will cover some of those basic brands that we have that the ones that are on tap year-round those are the ones that ate it makes sense to produce on a larger scale at a production facility which in turn then allows us to let our head brewers at each of our locations, loose to have fun and to create a very novel very interesting beers that are going to be sought after at that particular location into a matter of turning are each individual location that we have planned into a destination of its own there’s a lot of mistakes in terms of breweries it open multiple locations that they just send all other product to one location that’s that’s produce and each location has consistency which it was good on the one hand because you have something that people expect but it doesn’t make each of those locations destinations because if I can get this really great limited release beer at every location why would I go to locations if I’ve got a limited release beer at one location that’s different from a limited release beer at another location guess what I just turned one customer into a customer at both my locations and so that gets us a little bit off-topic in terms of brewhouse size but as you scale up and if you scale into a large brewing facility suddenly you may not need that seven barrel system in your brewhouse you might be able to get away with smaller system and so were trying to balance the the two extremes of on the one hand we don’t want to be brewing constantly at the and are brewery but at the same time we also are not wanting to find ourselves in a situation where we have too much excess capacity down the road as we grow and as we have more of our products being done through a third party sort of location either a warehouse its own BIOS or a warehouse that we contract brewed through and so those are all important considerations on the front-end because the weather isn’t necessarily a big difference between a seven barrel brewhouse and a three barrel bring at seven barrel brewhouse and a five barrel brewhouse there is a big difference between a five barrel brewhouse and going down to maybe a three barrel brewhouse in terms of cost it it quickly gets cheaper because you just simply don’t have to have quite the same number of tanks and you’re not using nearly as much stainless steel and things of that nature there’s another consideration if you’re of the mindset that I think we are for the most part and you really don’t want scale the brewhouse out there are still ways that you can have your cake and eat it too so to speak in terms of having a decent capacity so that you don’t have to find yourself in a situation where you’re constantly brewing to keep up with capacity and yet at the same time you are not breaking the bank in terms of your startup costs for your euro brewpub and that method is going in the direction of perhaps considering alternatives to fermenters made of stainless steel stainless steel fermenters look fantastic they are that’s just kind of iconic beauty of a a brewery by their also very expensive there are alternatives to this you have dairy the tanks that are made of an impermeable plastic that you can go with and utilize that as your is your fermenter you’ve got a retrofit in a little bit but for the most part you can do all your fermenters for about the cost of one stainless fermenter if you go that route and it’s a great way to set save thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars on your brewhouse equipment which when your first try to open up brewpub cash is king actually cash is king down the road as well but especially when you’re first opening is so easy to run out of money because everybody around you is trying to spend your money we haven’t even gotten into our build out yet and it is incredible how much people just want to spend your money for you like crazy and so you have to protect your cash and one great way to protect your cash is by protecting it in the brewhouse and being very very careful as to what you’re spending your money on and when you’re spending it so those are just a few of my random thoughts this morning on the concept of deciding how you’re going to size your brewhouse and Howard trying to decide how organ size our brewhouse I’m Augustine Iacopelli and this is been what’s brewing with Augustine oh thanks a lot for listening