CO2 - cost?

[SeanLarkin]

Does anyone have a formula for costing out CO2 per bbl? I'm putting together a business plan and i need to figure out what it costs? Help a brother out!

Sean

[einhorn]

LOTS of numbers here

http://sites.google.com/site/republicbrewpub/

[SeanLarkin]

co2

So using one of the spread sheets it looks like Co2 costs around 6.36 a bbl does that sound right?

[jwalts]

Hey Sean,

The financial model spreadsheet accounts for CO2 in two places: the 'Brewery' tab and the 'Expenses' tab.

In the 'Brewery' tab, it's the amount of CO2 required to produce the beer. The $1.78/bbl I used was just a best guess on my part, and it's been so long that I don't even remember what I did - I probably calculated the volume of CO2 in a typical barrel of beer and added some extra cost for process CO2 (things like purging tanks and transferring beer, which will vary widely between breweries), which resulted in an average of 8.89 lbs of CO2 for each barrel of beer, and then multiplied it by the assumed $0.20/lb cost. The asterisk means I had more research to do. Anyway, the cost per pound will depend on how you purchase your CO2, i.e. bulk vs. canisters and whether or not you'll receive discounts based on how much you buy, so your best course of action would probably be to start with the 8.89 lb/bbl estimate of CO2 usage and find out from your future supplier how much it'll cost based on the total amount you expect to use in a year.

In the 'Expenses' tab, CO2 is hidden in the "Direct Operating Expenses" category. That's meant to cover typical bar/restaurant CO2 use, e.g. serving beer and blowing out CO2. It's not listed as a separate expense because I used National Restaurant Association numbers that treat it the same way. If you're working on a packaging brewery, you won't need to worry about this number. However, you'll want to add some more CO2 usage for packaging (the spreadsheet doesn't represent a specific business model, so I don't know why the number is set to zero) and serving from the tap room.

Joe

[SeanLarkin]

Got it!! thanks for the reply...

[SeanLarkin]

How about cost per batch on Oxygen? Is there a formula for that?

[jwalts]

I assumed $0.20/lb, which is probably wrong, but my assumed usage rate of 0.01 lb/bbl I assumed is probably in the right ballpark. I just never got around to asking how much oxygen costs per pound. Multiplying the two numbers results in $0.002/bbl, which is hidden by the two-decimal rounding (looks like zero) in the spreadsheet.

Joe