Brewpub Startup Questions - process, equipment, wisdom?

[omearabros]

First, thanks in advance to all on ProBrewer helping us make our dream come true! Cheers to you guys, without whom we would never have made it beyond the garage and the glass carboy.

We're another couple of homebrewers opening a small brewpub! We're studying like crazy, enrolled in intensive courses and doing pilot brews as often as the day job will allow. But there's one problem -- we're going to be funded, with equipmet on order in the coming months, and we've never brewed at this scale. (5BBL, 60 seat brewpub in a small town.) In other words, we're going into commercial brewing blind. We've got classes coming up, and some hands-on brews with local brewers, but we're trying to get a grasp of this stuff pre-classroom.

We're reaching out for any wisdom about the process, the brewhouse, and daily operations that isn't in the books, or readily available online. What can we expect as far as learning curve at the helm of the brewhouse? Is anyone willing to step us through their personal process, keeping in mind I'm well-versed in the basics and the equipment ON PAPER but have no true experience.

Think of it this way: We know the basics of the valves, the controls, the CIP system, the heat exchanger and glycol system... but we've never turned a butterfly valve or heated 5BBLs of sparge water.

Feel free to comment, PM or email me directly. You can't imagine how much pro advice helps us along the way.

Again, Thank you!
Tim
brewing@omearabros.com

[GlacierBrewing]

Hi Tim,
Don't tuck your pants into your rubber boots!

Prost!
Dave

[kbills]

I second Dave's comment! (Although I recently abandoned the rubber boots for good Timberland Pros so my feet would not be so sore at the end of the day).

Plan for cleaning to take a lot longer than you are used to. Cleaning your stove pot and carboy take a lot less time than the bigger setup.

Once you get in a routine - having your fermenter empty to start the day is big. Too many times, I tried kegging, cleaning, and brewing at the same time. Too often my fermenter was not ready to be filled when the boil was to be done. That just made for a much longer day.

Good luck.

-Kevin
Corcoran Brewing

[mwth0mas]

My advice is the hands on at other breweries. If you know the theory, you need the hands on to feel comfortable with the scale of the equipment.

Most important is to respect the equipment. Serious injury/damage can result in something as simple as taking off the wrong valve. Ensure you know what you are doing at all times, as well as anyone working in the brewery.

I find doing is the easiest way to learn.

[Michael_L]

It's all about scale!

Tim,
As daunting as it may sound, brewing equipment and the process (not making good beer) is purely about scale. Not that there aren't pieces of the process you don't do differently as a home brewer vs pro, but it really is about scale. I am in the building phase of my nano brewery. I have primarily home-brew experience. I am friends with several of the brewers around my former residence, and I peppered them with questions all the time. I went into their breweries, telling them up front that I wanted education for my own start-up, and I cleaned floors, mash tuns, buckets, bottled thousands of cases of beer, and essentially whored my muscle for knowledge. In one case, I was very lucky, and was able to help a very good friend build his commercial brewery from the ground up to production.
All that being said, I realized that it all comes down to scale. I took the little bits and pieces I learned at each brewery, and I went home to put them all together into a minuscule system in my home setup. I was able to find very small conicals, brewhemoth.com, that I could spund my beers in and have a CIP system. You can go online and buy all the fittings, valves and clamps. I've done just about everything but carb in a brite tank and run my canner. That's all coming soon.
Go visit all the breweries you can and spend as much time as possible with their brewers and staff. Mimic what you like at home at the scale of your home brewery. With that knowledge and experience, you can scale up as need be, and learn the rest through your courses or as you go.
I hope this helps. This is the most amazing forum for knowledge. It's the second place to go after exhausting your local wizards. Best of luck to you.

Cheers,
Michael
Three Ranges Brewing Company

[I H8 UM]

Colorado Boy Brewing class

I took this class and it answers all of the questions you are asking. I highly recommend it. Best $2500 we spent.

Rich

[BonedaleBeer]

Honestly the brewing is the easy part! 5g, 5BBL, 50BBL - the process is basically the same. It'll definitely help working at a similar sized brewery before you get going, but you will have to make up your own procedures based on your individual system.

The BUSINESS of a brewpub is the part that you really need to figure out. If you have other bar/restaurant management experience, then you are well on your way, but if not, make sure you hire someone who does that you can trust.

Being the brewer/bartender/manager/cleaning crew sounds like a good plan at first, until you are closing at 2am then back in at 8 to mash in and clean up at 3 to get the bar ready to open again. It gets old quick and then everything starts to suffer.

This website is actually one of the best resources you will ever find if you can get your search terms right.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[brewmatt333]

Thankfully, you will find that the principles of brewing 5 gallons are the same as brewing 5 bbls and 500 bbls. You are still milling grain, mashing grain, sparging, boiling, adding hops, removing hops, chilling wort, and fermenting. What differs for the most part is the cleaning processes. No longer can you clean your equipment with a wet sponge. But it's not all that difficult. the chemicals you will use on a large scale are the same on the small scale (PBW, Starsan, exc.) It's just about circulating these chemicals through a pump and sprayball. The other difference is instead of brewing on your own schedules and for your own consumption, you need to brew what the pub needs. You need to be able to anticipate stock a month or two in advance and brew beers now that you know you will need then. Nothing is worse than running out of your most popular beer and not having that beer into a fermenter yet. I have found that to be the biggest challenge. To be honest though, when you start using nice conical fermenters with a great CIP system, a clean and efficient heat exchanger, well functioning pumps, free flowing false bottoms, high capacity mills, and all he other bells and whistles that come with the big equipment, you will wonder how you ever managed to brew at home.