Are cooling fermenting tanks absolutely necessary?

[BDawg]

Thanks, Andy.
A Sabco is a good way to start at the homebrew level.
Or one of these: http://morebeer.com/category/morebeer-b ... tures.html

You will also need something this:
http://morebeer.com/products/personal-h ... uxe-1.html

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Or, you can start with something simple like this:
http://morebeer.com/products/b3200-10-g ... ystem.html

I'd suggest you start by reading this:
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

[andyest]

Thanks, Andy.
A Sabco is a good way to start at the homebrew level.
Or one of these: http://morebeer.com/category/morebeer-b ... tures.html

You will also need something this:
http://morebeer.com/products/personal-h ... uxe-1.html

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Or, you can start with something simple like this:
http://morebeer.com/products/b3200-10-g ... ystem.html

I'd suggest you start by reading this:
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

Thanks man...I will make sure to come back here and update you on my experiences once we get it all set up and running..whenever that happens

Whitebeard_Brewer - thanks for the input as well.

Good luck!

[LordUlrich]

As someone who has brewed professionally I'll let you in on a secret: brewing professionally is a lot of work. A 5 gallon batch at home takes me half a day, brewing 10 bbl takes a half a day. Heating 10 bbl in one batch is cheaper than in 31 10 gallon batches.

As a pro you are in the business of selling beer, which is harder than it sounds, especially in untaped midwestern markets (market I worked in).

I ran the math and if costs can be minimized (no rent, cheap energy....) it is possible to be profitable at the nano scale. Your risk is lower but your profits are also lower, you still need to sell the beer.

To answer your question, yes as a pro fermentation temperature control is necessary, customers want a consistent product, temp control is necessary for consistency. Glycol jackets are good, otherwise a walk-in cooler would work.

Oh and in the US professional breweries must be licensed, which is not cheap in many states.

Good Luck!

[duckmanco]

As others have said, going nano could be profitable depending on your business model.

Plan to sell every drop at full retail pricing (by the pint)? Then you just may have something there... Plan to keg it and/or bottle and distribute? I'd be very nervous about trying my hand at that game.

Full on retail pricing and sales all across your bar can be quite profitable on much less beer produced. There will be other costs such as running the tap room, staff etc.

As JZ said, it's all about getting your ounce/dollar price up.

[biertourist]

There are 3 guys in my homebrew club who are weeks away from opening their own brewery.

All 3 are BJCP judges.
All 3 have won numerous awards in homebrew competitions.
Between the 3 of them they have about 27 years of homebrewing experience and hundreds of batches. They have secured a couple of million dollars in financing and are spending every penny of it. 2 out of the 3 still have their software engineering jobs and the 3rd has just retired.

Despite all their experience and knowledge, they do not feel qualified to brew on the commercial scale so they are in the midst of interviewing candidates to hire an experienced head brewer.

They are hoping and praying with all that that they will hopefully turn a profit in a couple of years.

Bottom line, these guys are doing it right.

HiFi Brewing?

Adam

[biertourist]

I have to concur with most everything everyone has said here so far.

If you'd like to talk to someone who HAS started a nanobrewery with a SABCO system on a part time basis, give the fine folks at "Dirty Bucket" in Woodinville, Washington a call. -They work their day jobs and then have been working non-stop operating the SABCO. They have a cool little retail location to sell beer directly and they get a lot of walk-in traffic being in the middle of Washington's winery tap room town of Woodinville and they gave up on the SABCO in less than a year they were upgrading.

The SABCO also isn't great value if you shop around and compare it to alternatives options.

If you're in a state that allows you to sell directly and you're in a good location where you can sell all of your beer directly, AND you don't have to pay any rent or carrying costs on the facilities that HELPS but it can only help so much. 7bbl has been considered the minimum for small brew pubs for a while, but some folks have survived on smaller systems in recent years. A 1/2 bbl is an exercise in futility, though.

Stout Tanks in Portland now has the basis for a 1 BBL system for $3,100; you'll need pumps, burners, hoses and loads of other things (including more and larger fermenters) but your money will go much further than with the SABCO system.
MANY small (and award winning) breweries in the UK use converted dairy tanks as open fermenters and make their own attemperation coils to keep fermentation temps under control. The UK has really found some models that allow small breweries to survive even in an INSANELY competitive and over-crowded environment but it involves making intelligent decisions in purchasing and adapting equipment; they're not even ATTEMPTING to use US 1/2 BBL systems, either, though.

I'd put 3 BBL at the bare minimum for the brew house if you can sell all your beer directly and don't have any debt or rent to pay. You'll want to maximize the use of all your equipment and make sure that you're double filling or triple filling fermenters (Fermenters should be 2x - 3x the size of your brew length.). -If you invest in water treatment and deaeration/degassing equipment you could also use high gravity brewing techniques to increase your output with a smaller brewhouse. (Example: If you're brewing 3BBL of a 1.050 beer instead brew it to a gravity of 1.075 and ferment it out and then water it down to 4 BBL of 1.050 beer by adding sterilized, treated, and deaerated water on the way to the serving tank. -It won't taste quite the same as if you made a 1.050 gravity beer, though (more esters and higher alcohols).)


So in summary: I agree with most of what everyone else has said already BUT if you're definitely dead-set on doing this don't stick your head in the sand; address the most significant concerns by going with bigger equipment on a similar budget. -Focus on maximizing the amount of beer you can get given the size of the brew house AND still getting the biggest brew house you can for the budget.

(Fermenters are going to cost you and they're also going to be the bottleneck if you even remotely correctly size the brewhouse; there are some US nanos who are using plastic conical fermenters for primary fermentation quite well and very inexpensively and there are some UK breweries who use repurposed stainless dairy tanks; temp control IS important but it's easy to do. -It's as simple as buying a large glycol cooler and pumping either chilled water or chilled glycol through a coper or stainless coil emerged in the beer or wrapping the fermenter in heat transfer coils (some breweries even use plastic for this although the heat transfering properties aren't great.) Also make sure you can sell all of your beer directly or your profit will be completely non-existent (it likely won't be a living in either event).


Adam

[biertourist]

My previous recommendation was if you just couldn't be talked out of doing it at all. My open-ended recommendations would be:

1. Instead open a craft beer bar and make a bunch of money on simple items that can be made with a tiny kitchen and by SELLING craft beer (This is where the money is; NOT in making beer.). -This is the model a pub/nano in Seattle started with and being successful at selling beer enabled them to buy a 3 BBL brewery so they could also become a nano later.

2. Instead opening a brewing company and start building a brand and thinking of the product that you want to create; get customers who will buy your beer and then have another brewer brew your beer under contract. -Again it's great experience that you'll need to have to be successful in a brewery; look into what type of contract arrangement you want and get one that gives you plenty of control over the end product. If you do it right, it gives you more options for getting an appropriately sized brewery later.


"If I build it, they will come." -Only works in the movies.

Adam

[graybeerd]

To add a bit of perspective...I try to brew at least once a month on a 10 gallon system and me and my few neighbors routinely drink us dry. Imagine if you were selling beer, even if just at a brewpub type setting.

good luck! start homebrewing. We'll be here to help.