[edj]

This is so apropos!

Three groups of my friends (6 people, total) are attempting to start breweries, brewpubs, or cideries.

I have a number of thoughts for these friends. (Advice not totally unsolicited -- I've been homebrewing for about 17 years.)

- Brewing a good batch of beer - better than most of the what's sold in stores - is easy. Almost anyone can do it with their first batch.

- This tricks people into thinking that brewing is easy. But...

- Consistency is hard. That recipe that turned out so well the first time? It might be good the second time, or it might spoil, or it might be too hoppy, or it might be cloudy, or taste of yeast, and so on. At any rate, it's unlikely that it will taste exactly the same as it did the first time.

- Brewing large batches is hard. Even transitioning from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches requires different equipment. Recipes don't scale in a simple way. And when you get into backwatering high gravity beers everything becomes even more complex.

- Making wine and cider is hard compared to brewing beer. The former two have fewer ingredients, which, being fruit instead of grain, tend to be less consistent. Conditioning takes MUCH longer which means feedback and learning take much longer.

- And yet, I bet actually making a consistent, high-quality beverage is the easy part compared to running a profitable brewing business.

- Brewing is expensive. Startup costs are high. Even an enthusiastic homebrewer can easily spend thousands. Think $10,000 for a bare-minimum commercial brewing setup built around e.g. a SABCO Brew Magic.

- The legal stuff is hard. Licenses, bonds, a legal location -- all that stuff takes time and money.

- The food industry is brutal. Combining a brewery and a restaurant seems like it must tremendously increase the probability of failure.

Anyway, brewing is a fun hobby. But one of those that sort of lulls people into making hasty business decisions.

[bsims]

My friend has been working on a TV series for years which finally was picked up last season by Esquire Network featuring craft breweries across the country. Awesome to watch it go from custom videos for the Craft Brewer's Association, to pilot, to first and second seasons. Super proud of them.

Brew Dogs. http://tv.esquire.com/shows/brew-dogs

[masklinn]

At first I thought "well that's an unforfunate name collision with the Brewdog brewery". But it turns out the show's headlined by brewdog's founders. Nice. They make fun beer (though I'm still sad they retired the tac' and the bismarck, those two were interesting experiences).

[aroch]

I watched this solely because of the brewing on a train episode.

[owl_icecream]

So true. Add to this that brewing to the tastes of your target market will be much less interesting than trying out that new farmhouse yeast you located at 28*C in the garage.

Who wants to brew pilsner and pale 7 days a week?

[huherto]

> Brewing large batches is hard. Even transitioning from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches requires different equipment. Recipes don't scale in a simple way. And when you get into backwatering high gravity beers everything becomes even more complex.

As an ignorant software engineer. I have to ask this. ¿Can you keep the batch size constant and increase the number of batches?

[rcoder]

Generally speaking, the cost of scaling beer production is paid once. You need bigger, more expensive brewing equipment (and can't just repurpose mass-produced consumer items like turkey fryers and drink coolers) and the recipes have to be adjusted to the new capacity and setup, but your unit cost is much, much lower.

Surface area doesn't scale linearly with capacity, so both cost and cleaning time actually get _better_ as you scale up. Grain, cleaning supplies, and tools get cheaper as you scale, too.

It also only takes a tiny active culture of something bad to ruin an entire batch of beer. Each vessel, airlock, valve, and spoon is another potential source of contamination, so having fewer things to clean is a Good Thing.

[pielud]

You could probably do something like that, but it'd be a huge waste of time. The time to brew a batch is pretty much the same no matter the volume. I.E. Brewing a 5 gallon batch takes about the same amount of time as brewing 20 gallons, assuming you have the equipment capable of doing that volume.

[latj]

I think huherto is suggesting beer concurrency. That is, instead of having a 20 gallon setup, having four 5 gallon setups. It will take longer because you will have to do whatever mixing,testing, etc four times but if the longest part of the process is waiting- you win in that aspect.

The question is- would this make it easier to be more consistent?

[rje]

As a homebrewer I think this would be a pretty rough way to try and scale. The actual brew time would be the same, but you've increased your cleaning and maintenance significantly, you need a solution to pipe from multiple stations into fermenting vessels, you need a significant amount of extra space dedicated to brewing that could otherwise be used for fermentation vessels, etc.

I think the right answer is to get your equipment and do test batches to rework your recipes at scale. If you're successful as a brewery it's a process you'll have to do multiple times as you grow anyways, so avoiding it once seems like a silly optimization.

[huherto]

Thanks latj, this is what I was thinking. Big batches may be a good model for a large brewery but not necessarily for a small one that is growing organically.

I can imagine several advantages. You can replicate without having to extrapolate quantities, pressure, etc. You get to run more experiments, I can envision a supervised machine learning system that learns which parameters make the best beer. You don't throw out big batches, etc. Sure, it may require more labor, but you get other advantages.

[latj]

How about a coop of home brewers- everyone agrees to brew a certain recipe of beer that month; All the beer gets blended together and redistributed. What does that taste like?

I visited a village once that did this with their wine and distilled liquor.

[sbirchall]

Take a look into the sherry making process if you can find a good resource. The (highly generalised) idea is to use several batches created yearly say, so that by the time you have made seven batches for example, the first batch is fully matured. You siphon off half of the first batch and this is your starter - it tells you the character of the finished product, but only really hints at what you'll get. Now you take each batch and tow it down the line, taking half the second batch and topping up the first and so on until you are left to top up your most immature batch. By the time you've got this working as a production line the consistency of the final product will be pretty solid. Personally I can't stand sherry, though.

I'm at work and don't have access to my brewing books so I can't be any more specific than this but I found it an interesting solution to the problem of consistency.

[kinofcain]

It's referred to as a Solera, and it's more for making a product consistent over a timespan of years. Non-vintage champagne is also blended together for consistency. As is scotch (even the single malts are usually blends of multiple years). The Solera is slightly different in that the wine is commingled over the course of years, whereas in most champagne and whiskey production the blending is done just before bottling. Some beers that are aged are blended (rodenbach comes to mind), and even Budweiser gets blended together from different tanks to ensure the end result is consistently "Budweiser".

[sbirchall]

That's exactly it, cheers for that - the brewing book I use mentions it's a traditional method but seems to imply for Sherry, but maybe I'm just not remembering correctly. Thanks for clearing it up. I'm in half a mind to set one up for my elderflower champagne (the hard stuff ~16%ABV). But this year I'm just going to focus on method and produce as many small batches as I can.

[CGudapati]

Most important thing that comes to my mind is space. I have no idea about the size occupied by a single "batch" but I can say that two small ones require more space. One more thing is, maintaining one large "reactor" is easy when compared to 10 small ones.

[asynchronous13]

> Anyway, brewing is a fun hobby. But one of those that sort of lulls people into making hasty business decisions.

Well said. I started brewing as a hobby about 20 years ago (egads!) But always knew that I would lose the joy of it if I tried to turn into a professional gig.

A friend is in the process of opening a brewery right now. He drastically underestimated the legal paperwork involved to get started. He's sitting on a great space with all the new equipment installed and still waiting in the local government to finish their end of the process....

[BrownBuffalo]

And this is unlike moving a small business to large how? This is like saying; I shouldn't start my own company or try to grow it because the complexities are too great to overcome. If you know the right people, this is why you bring in a master brewer from Sam Adams who wants to have his own stake. It's all about business, and not about brewing at some point in the game - and you need to put your SKIN in the game if you want to grow. Sad that people put the idea of opening a brewery down because of how "hard" it is. Pull up your big-girl pants and bring in a skilled person or two and go to the next level. Takes initiative. :) I say this with love, mind you.

[ska]

FYI: "unsolicited" probably isn't the word you meant to use there (perhaps "unsupported").

This is literally unsolicited advice.

[kgermino]

>This is literally unsolicited advice.

I read it as his friends viewing him as someone with brewing experience and asking questions. Which would literally be 'soliciting' his advice...

[ska]

Ah, yes, it is plausible that I was being too literal minded and it was merely grammatically awkward with a different intent.

I usually wouldn't comment but I think many here are not native English speakers (so might appreciate it), but more telling the setup appealed to my sleep deprived brain. Always perilous, amusing yourself.