Becoming a geuezerie (legally)

[william.heinric]

Yeah, so how does one go about getting wort from a brewery for fermentation and aging? I can't imagine the blender would want to brew it (which seems to negate the alt prop), but it looks like the contractor brewery is obliged to sell the beer in its final package (ie not a 60 gallon bbl).

Anyway, is there a legal eagle out there in ProBrewer land who knows this stuff? Because I'm currently buggered.

[mashpaddled]

The TTB is pretty clear on this one. A brewery cannot transfer beer in bulk to a brewery unless the recipient is under the same ownership. If you are using fermented beer then you'll have to set up an alternating proprietorship(s) which would allow you to move the beer from the original location to wherever you are blending.

If unfermented wort is involved then I have a less clear answer for you. No alcohol means the wort is not regulated by the TTB and instead falls under FDA regulations for food production. That may create some alternative issues for the brewery producing wort to comply with FDA regulations that they would normally be exempt from because their product is regulated by the TTB (except where the FDA also regulates beer). If additional FDA regulation is going to create complications for the brewers then I think you'll have a hard time finding brewers willing to take on added regulatory oversight to sell some wort.

The easiest way to do this is to find a brewery with lots of free space and put your whole operation inside the host brewery as an alternating proprietorship.

[almalkin]

You might want to check with Mystic Brewery, out of Chelsea, MA. I believe that they produce wort at another brewing facility and transport it to their own facility for fermentation and aging. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, but this sounds close to what you are trying to do.

[william.heinric]

All right, mashpaddled, that's what I was worried about. Not the FDA part, although that sounds like less fun than the TTB, but I had hoped there was a way around it.

Steven, I'll take a look at Mystic and see what they're about. If there is a way, I suspect they'd know it.

Cheers,
Bill

[william.heinric]

John, I think that you have a reasonable point, but remember that there are very few people globally who are able to create blended acid ales as a full time job. I would think that having a large brew length to fill a large number of barrels allows said blender to spend the rest of the week brewing beers with faster turns. The economic considerations are one reason why many lambic producers create one style of wort, then fruit, blend and age for diversity.

Contract brewing becomes an issue with such a low capital outlay, because there isn't any investment in short term production tanks (no glycol, no CCFVs, no BBTs), and no packaging equipment. Alt Props are also not legal in every state, which is a concern.

It seems that, in order to make this work, it would take a facility for production of more mainstream beers with shorter turn times, with an additional facility off-site with lower rent to handle barrels and lab work. That keeps the TTB happy, the money coming in, and the bugs isolated. It also looks quite a bit like the model used by some of my favorite brewers in California.

Thanks for your help, and if I hear of anything, I'll let you know.

Cheers!
Bill

[Natrat]

I've seen this done with some simple paperwork. The method was to add the owner of the receiving brewery to the ownership of the manufacturing brewery. The deal was done by trading 100 shares of nonvoting stock between the breweries, so that both sets of owners were on both independent breweries (ie separate bond, separate license).

Now, in this case the relationship festered when one of the breweries was bought out by a bigger party and someone got greedy, but as long as a good "pre-nup" is drawn up, I think it's a good dodge.

They were transferring both fermented and unfermented beer, and the receiver was using it to make extracts for nutriceuticals and homebrewers.