Low End/Cost Beer Receipe

[trevorhay]

Hi All

Hoping someone here can help me out. Myself and my business partner are in the process of starting our own craft brewery. We're looking at feasibility of the cost right now, and are in the process of getting quotes from several contract breweries as to the cost of production. Our issue is that right now, we have not decided on an exact recipe, but the breweries will only quote us if we give them a recipe. Until we are sure the costs are within an acceptable range we are not going to have the brewmasters we are working with produce a test batch.

If anyone could point me in the direction of a pilsner recipe for the low end (in terms of costs) I would really appreciate it. We are 100% not going to use this recipe but need it to provide the contract breweries before they will quote us.

Many thanks

Trevor

[Scott M]

"Brewing Classic Styles" by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer.

[einhorn]

"Low-end pilsner" - doesn't sound too inviting, but to each his own.

My suggestion would be to avoid doing a lager if you're looking to save money. If you do end up doing a lager, I guess you would have to make it pretty light meaning a low grain bill. Unfortunately though, your major costs are in packaging and labor, not in raw ingredients.

[irishsnake]

seconded - lagers are more expensive to brew than ales due to extended time in the tanks.

[South County]

Talk to Doug and Tracy and Metropolitan Brewing in Chicago. They are a new craft venture that brews ONLY lagers and they call tell you how capital and time intensive it can be.