Shipping wort for a chain of brewpubs

[Tash]

Granite City, BJ's in Reno

The 'wort house' is in Iowa, since there is no fermentation going on there from what I understand there is no 'license' needed for brewing. They move the 'wort' in diary style trucks moving from location to location. There are only a few 'brewer's for the whole chain. Onsite managers handle filtration, carbonation etc. The patent is sort of a joke but to the uninformed it must seem like 'magic'. Clearly for the investors... The whole thing is to beat the tax man. If you aren't transporting alcohol you aren't having to play around with distributors. If it were finished product and you moved product into a three tier state you'd loose any advantage profit wise as the distributor would 'bend you over'. Smart for profit lame for beer quality...

BJ's in Reno found this out the hard way. California is a three tier state and bringing in beer from Nevada requires them to run it through a distributor. They built the Reno brewery with the intent of bringing a lot of beer to CA. They got 'busted' by the CA dept of Revenue(or similar dept.) for lack of paying taxes. (FYI, this is second hand info I will except being corrected for the record.) BJ's makes way better beer too FYI... Another issue with the BJ's 'way' is they fill 1/2 bbls and transfer into grundies at the restaurant level which must be pretty tedious...

Both groups have figured out a way to get beer to multiple sites both seem to be doing very well without major investments in brewers and equipment for every site served....

Tash

[akenn]

If you really want to do this, vacuum pack in plastic, and chill below 40*F. Transport it in a refrigerated unit, and make sure it doesn't go any higher in temp or fluctuate. It is the same as shipping meat or dairy. I would personally hold it at around 15*F, nothing lives there, but it won't freeze (which could effect the sugar compounds by aligning the crystals)

[canyon]

Zoigl

There is an old community brewery tradition that is still in practice in eastern Franconia, Germany (maybe other areas too) where there is a cooperative brewery but the members haul wort back to their own cellars to ferment. I visited one that still used a cool ship and the members hauled the cool wort home in a tank on a wagon pulled by a tractor. Granted this is for a short haul (under three klicks) on a rural road. It was strange to see an ancient brewery without fermentation or kegs to tap!

[World Class Bev]

From what I've gathered in my research, the different liquor laws in each state could make transporting actual fermented beer across state lines illegal. This is the reason for the shipping of wort.

There wouldn't be anything illegal about doing this as long as you have a registered, licensed distributor handle the transfer. I presume that your point about it being illegal relates to the idea of doing it yourself, but going through a distributor for this type of operation is simple and commonplace.