Brewery sizing questions

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Hey everyone,

Sorry for yet another ‘help me size my brewery’ question, but here we go. We have just secured a location in a downtown area. It is 64’x47’x18’ with a mezzanine on one side that runs 8’ above the first floor and is 64’x14’. We plan on putting our tasting room on the mezzanine and have our brewery and bottle shop on the main floor.

Until we get rezoning through the city (might take a year) we will be doing all our sales through the bottle shop and a tasting room. Our plans have us producing a maximum of 1500bbl/year in this location.

We are thinking of putting a small kitchen for bar snacks on the main floor, along with an accessible bathroom (needed by law), an office, a lab and cold room. My current sketchup has us limited to approx 300 sqft for a cold room. We were thinking originally of going with a 15bbl brewhouse, 30bbl hlt, (5) 15bbv fv and (1) 15bbl bbt, but now I’m thinking that system might be oversized since we will have no place to actually store the beer we produce.

Thoughts? We can save a bit of room by going with a 10bbl system and my numbers seem to think we could manage the numbers with it.

I’m glad to answer any questions and share my current sketchup. We’re planning on meeting with the architect in the next week who also might be able to shed some light into the possibilities/restrictions.

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Looks like I forgot a few details in my original post. We are thinking of producing 4-5 different styles and kegging ~60% and canning the rest.

We will be serving 6-8 taps in our tasting room from those kegs and then selling the cans from the bottle shop.

Cheers,
John

[BeerBred]

So, it's 3000 sq'? You think 1500 barrels is max and you identified that a 15x30 bbl is too much, you are correct there. That system is for 15,000 barrels. Have you looked into the cost of ordering cans by the pallet instead of trailer? You have no room for production of cans. This plan sounds like it needs some serious re-evaluation. And why go through the expense and pain of rezoning to make 1500 barrels a year. It's very competitive out there now. You might want to scrap this all together or get someone on board who knows the beer business.

You say your sales will come from the tasting room/bottle shop until rezoned... Where are they coming from after that? Why do you need rezoned if you can sell from the room until then? A small kitchen for snacks? What kind of snacks? Unless it's bags of chips, this could make you a brewpub by law. 3000 feet is enough for a 7 barrel, small cooler for kegs, small tap room and a bathroom. That's it. And you're pushing that.

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Thanks for the reply, BeerBred!

Keep in mind that this is in a medium sized city in Canada and the beer landscape is not as competitive as it is in the states. We do plan to sell the majority of the beer out of the taproom and the bottle shop and have a kitchen (we plan to sell small snacks like grilled cheeses, soups, etc). The current zoning of the building allows for all of these uses. We need to get a rezoning here if we want to even sell one keg to another bar or restaurant so that's why the rezoning might happen. We plan on having a few licensees in the neighbourhood, but nothing major until a) we are successful and b) when we have a larger production facility on the outskirts of the city. The city is currently reevaluating the necessary zoning for breweries/brew pubs so the rezoning might not be necessary to sell kegs.

Yes, the main floor is 3000sqft plus we have ~900sqft for the mezzanine where the tasting room and bathrooms will be. We are now thinking of a 10bbl system with 10 and 20bbv fvs. which should easily be able to handle 1500bbls. I think the 15bbl might be overkill and take up valuable storage/cold room space. We are certainly not going to be producing a ton of cans so we will be getting them by the pallet (along with our grain sacks).

Cheers,
John