Floorplan for ttb, is it a requirement for the brewery to have an "office"?

[Beardown]

I see some floorplan with an "office " and some without. Is this required for approval ? Thanks

[briangaylor]

I see some floorplan with an "office " and some without. Is this required for approval ? Thanks

Nope - they could care less if you have a nice little cube to work in or file your taxes in the bathroom.

[Onebadsc]

Yeah, I have a very small nano for distribution only, did not specify office space, and got my brewers notice pretty quickly.

[Beardown]

Good, that's what I was hoping! Did anyone run into any issues with them in reference to the diagram about the "tax determined" area? The plan is to have taps coming straight out of the cold room. I would assume that once the beer is kegged and in the cold room it would be considered "tax determined". Is this correct? Even if taps are coming directly out of cold room wall? Thanks

[jebzter]

Tax determined is where you measure your taxable beer. We do it in our brites, there is a little loss when we keg out, which we track and it shows up in the kegs. Kegs are, for us, considered removed for sale when they hit the cold room, weather it is for the tasting room or wholesale. You do need to keep track of how many kegs are sold on premises. On your drawings, you have a bonded area and an unbonded area, beer in production is stored in the unbonded area, when you tax determine it, it must physically move from the unbonded to bonded area. When it does this, you are liable for paying taxes on this unless the beer is destroyed, or is a recorded loss from production.

[Beardown]

Ok, so- we will not be using brite tanks but will be using the jacketed fermenters as unitanks. We will keg directly from these tanks and then store the kegs in the cold room. Some of these kegs will be tapped with lines coming through the cold room walls and and some will be distributed to bars. So, if my understanding is correct, I measure tax determined as I'm filling the kegs from the unitank and then the bonded area would be the cold room? In this case how would my drawing reflect whatever the ttb is wanting to see? Thanks

[jebzter]

That would be correct. Quick question, will you have sight gauges on your unitanks? TTB will want some way of measuring the volume of beer before it is packaged, then the keg count after it is packaged. They track losses or increases of beer from the point before packaging to after, to see if you are short filling, adding water, over filling, or just not counting some kegs, basically any way that you could alter your tax liabilities or rip someone off. Not sure if they will ask any questions about it to you, it never came up for us since we use brite tanks, but when you start filing out the paperwork for your tax returns, you will need this data.

[Beardown]

Yea I've come to realize that a lot of this is dependant on the ttb agent that you're dealing with. Our unitanks do not have sight gauges. Any other option that I'd have? Hmmmmm

[jebzter]

The options get more expensive, flow meters(mag meters are best, turbines get messed up by hops), ultrasonic level sensors. Lots of ways to get it, and lots of ways to increase the cost.