You are opening a brew pub, right?

I get this question a lot, and I guess that is what everyone thinks of first is a brew pub.  They sound cool and its a romantic idea.  All your beers on tap, good food and your friends coming in all the time.  I'll admit, it is a great idea. 
However, that is not what I am interested in opening at this point.  I have done the restaurant thing, and it is a lot of fun and hard work.  Right now, I am just interested in a small brewery.  I really enjoy brewing and want to do that, but I am not interested in the extra work of a brew pub.  I don't want to deal with menus, and lots of employees.  Plus brew pubs are much more risk, and higher start up costs. 
I want to start something that is bigger than a nano brewery (200 gallons a year), but nothing huge to start with.  Really this is just a hobby and something I want to be able to do on the side for now.  My plan is to still brew on the weekends (just in larger quantities) and sell locally.  If I can expand from there, great!  If not, then Bexley will have some great local beer. 

Labeling beer bottles

I was recently asked what I use to label my bottles.  Years ago, as a homebrewer, I wanted to label my bottles for fun.  At first I used large blank stickers.  It was easy and I could just design a label on my computer and then print it on the sticker.  I would use a photo and just put text over it, or use Microsoft word to design something.  Either way worked.  I used the Avery stickers that were 6 to a full sheet of paper.  However, getting the sticker back off the bottle was an issue.  It took a lot of work.  Then, the more I brewed the higher the cost of doing stickers.  So I looked for an alternative.
I came up with a pretty simple solution.  I would still design the labels on a 2 x 6 grid on a piece of paper.  Then I printed them with a high quality color laser printer and cut the paper into labels.  I glued the labels on with glue stick.  While slightly more labor intensive, it worked really well to put the labels on and take them off.  They washed off easily in warm water and I could clean and sterilize the bottles for reuse.  This method gave me nice labels at a very low cost, and I used it for quite a while.  The only issue I ran into with this is if I wanted to put the bottles in a bucket of ice for serving.  The paper and color would hold up but the glue would wash off as the bottles got wet.  My solution was to never serve the beer that way!
Obviously that was not going to be a long term solution, so I tried some other things.  In place of the glue stick, I used spray mount adhesive.  It is basically spay rubber cement.  It holds up in water and is fairly easy to clean off the bottles.
I would recommend any of those solutions to put labels on the bottle.  Stickers, paper and glue stick, or paper and spray mount.  All work well, just find the one that best fits your needs.
For the label design, Microsoft Word is a great simple solution.  You can make the whole page into a table and easily copy the design to each cell.  If you want something a little more sophisticated, you can use Typestyler.  It is a program for Macs (they might have a PC version) that lets you design logos or other graphic items.  For label design it works really well and provides more tools than Word. It is more time consuming, but if you want more flexibility, I would recommend this over Word. Of course there are many other ways to create the label, but those are my two preferences for homebrew.
Let me know if you want more details, and if you have a better solution I would love to hear it. 

What to do with all that spent grain

I was brewing one day and had spilled some of the crushed grains on the
floor. It really was just some of the powdered bits that kind of get
everyone, but I noticed that my dog was licking the floor where it spilled.
She had always sniffed around the grains before, but I thought that was
just because she sniffs everything. Now I noticed she seemed to really
love the taste. I was not too concerned since it is just malted barley,
but it got me thinking. If she liked that so much what else could you do
with the grains. Of course other people are smarter than me and had
already figured that out.

A quick internet search turned up lots of recipes for spent grains. It is
something great to use, they are just grains that have soaked and had some
sugars removed through the mash process. I know that some big breweries
ship the grain out for cattle feed. We found one recipe for dog treats and
decided to try that. My dog loved them! So ever since then with every
brewing, I have saved a few cups of the spent grains and made dog treats.
(I have also made granola, flour, and breads.) I have played around with
the recipe and made it into one that the dog and I really like. It is easy
and bakes up nicely.

My kids thought I should try selling them, so I have added them to the shop
page on the website. Who knows, maybe they will catch on and be a hit.

Website updates

I wanted to look at changing the website. I am currently using iPage as
the host for the site, and they do provide a lot of nice tools to build a
website. However, the tools do not provide quiet as much flexibility as I
would like. They do offer some other services at an increased fee per
month, but I wanted to look at other options.
Through some web searches I found SoftPress' Freeway Express. They offer a
free trial for 30 days and I have been using it for the past 26 days. I
have to say it is a very nice program. It provides all the flexibility
that I need and I am able to do just about anything that I would like. The
big drawback is that it is very flexible and lets you do anything.
I have ended up spending a lot of time trying out all kinds of different
things and building the pages multiple ways. To me it is fun.
There is a bit of a learning curve but if you have some experience with
design software you can use Freeway. If you want to build a website on a
budget and have the time to do it yourself, I would highly recommend it.

Logo Design part 2

I did not hate the design I got from Infinity Logo Design, but I wanted to keep looking at my options.  I started thinking that something else had to be out there. 

After many more searches, I came across another company.  This one sells a program called TypeStyler, and they offer a free 30 day trial.  As I said before, I am not the most creative person, but I thought I could figure out this program.  So I set up an account and requested the 30 day trial. 

They sent me a link and I was able to easily download the program.  What was really nice, and unexpected, is that this did not trigger a bunch of spam emails or constant emails asking me to buy the program. 

It took some trial and error to learn how to use the program, but it basically works like a paint program.  I am sure I have not learned all of the functionality, but I was able to put together a log using it.  Here is what I came up with. 

I liked that I was able to add some other colors compared to what I got before.  It is a little more fun for the logo. 

I would love to hear any comments on the logos.

Logo Design

For a while now, I have been thinking about a nice logo for the Bexley Brewing Company.  However, I kept putting it off.  I am not very creative and figured I needed some help, and design firms can be expensive.  Since I am working on a very small budget, I needed to find a low cost option.  

I searched the internet for “logo design” and “free logo design”.  I thought there would be some website that did low cost design or I could find someone who did it in the spare time for a small fee.  The first sites I found offered free logo designs on their website.  They give you a number of images to pick from then you can change the color and add text.  Basically these are pretty much a joke.  If you are able to create something that looks good, you are not able to save the file in a high resolution format without a fee.  In my opinion, what you come up with on these sites is not worth paying for.  So I went on.

I found two web only companies that offered logo design.  The first one (99designs.com) has some great reviews and a offers three different cost options which is nice.  The second one (infinitylogodesign.com) has some mixed reviews, but also offers different cost options.  Infinity design is much less expensive than 99designs, but the mixed reviews were concerning.  Their site also has much less in the way of information on what they provide and fewer examples.  

Being cheap I decided to go with Infinity Logo, and it turned out to be a great experience.  With the package I picked I figured I might get something and would not be out any money if it did not work out.  I have to say I was surprised by the level of service they provide.  They assign a rep even on the plan I picked and he was very responsive to any request or question I had.  They provided the design a day faster than promised, and each revision only took a day or two.  

However, I did see a lot of drawbacks, but most were due to the package I picked.  I could only get
three revisions, and they only provided two samples to work from.  So if I did not like where they started, I was in trouble.  At the end of the day, I got a design that is OK and certainly one that I can use. 

I also found that they keep their cost down by offering a bunch of add ons.  If you want them to assign the copyright to you, it is an extra fee (99designs includes this in their packages).  Also, if you want something where you can get a lot of revisions and initial designs, it will cost you.  Overall it was a much better experience than what I expected.   I think they are trying very hard to improve their reputation, and if you are willing to spend a little money (and not looking for free options) I think they provide a nice service.  

One additional note on the copyright.  What any of these places charge for the copyright is pretty high.  The real cost to copyright and register something is $35, and the government offers an online system to make your filing.  More information can be found on copyright.gov.

Bad Day?

I really wanted to brew this weekend and work on a new recipe. I am very detailed and take lots notes so I can repeat the process and get the same beer every time.  I have had this idea for a new recipe and really wanted to try it out.  I was thinking that this weekend would be the perfect time.  I have been working on the recipe for a little while.  It’s a variation of one I came up with last year, and I really wanted to see how it would turn out. 

I decided to brew early in the morning so I could get other things done later (it is Mother’s Day weekend).  The weather has been bad, rain and thunderstorm.  I was not going to let that stop me, so I went ahead with my plans. When I was about to mill the grain I decided to check my grain mill and somehow the rollers were really out of wack.  It’s a good thing I checked.  

Maybe I should have taken this as a hint that things were going to go wrong. I moved them back into position and began to mill.  I had the grain weighed out in a couple of different paper bags.  First one went well, then I grabbed the second bag and it ripped as I was lifting it up.  I lost about 2 – 3 lbs, and the floor was not clean enough to try and use it anyway.  I did not have any more.  Now I could have stopped and go out to buy more, but for some reason I decided to press on.  I figured I was going to lose a little bit of the alcohol content. 

So I started to mill that bag.  About ½ way through, the grain mill just stopped moving the grain through.  The rollers were turning, but nothing was going through.  I had to scoop the grain out and see.  Nothing, it looked fine.  I dumped the grain back in and same problem.  After trying that whole process again and pushing on the grain it finally started to mill again.  I was getting pretty ticked off at this point.

I started the mash and as I added the grain, I realized that some of the un-milled grain was mixed in with the milled.  It must have been when the grain mill stopped working.

So now, I have a mash going with an unknown amount of grain and I am not sure how much is not milled properly.

I tried to relax and figured I would just push on.  At this point I should have realized that the whole idea of trying this new recipe was shot since I don’t know what I have in the mash tun.  Of course I was not thinking that clearly. 

I was heating the sparge water and then looked back at my recipe.  Somehow I had set it for a batch sparge and not fly sparge, so my grain amounts were off anyway.  I had too much grain for where I originally wanted to end up.  I reduced the sparge water amount a little and pressed on. 

The rest of the process went well.  Somehow I ended up with the SG in the range I wanted, but I am really not sure how.  And I still will have to try this all over again with the recipe, because I really have no idea what I did.  One nice thing about brewing is that if you make a mistake you still get beer, so at least it will be something to drink.  However, no matter how good (or bad) it is, I will never be able to repeat this one. 

After lunch I was thinking I was going to try the last new beer I made.  I have been tweaking my IPA recipe and brewed it last month. I knew it was ready to drink, but had not tried it yet.  This made my day.  It’s prefect, exactly where I wanted it to be!  Great aroma, the flavor is wonderful.   So this recipe is final and I will certainly make it again.

With that I can say the day was a success.

Kegs!

Still working on my business plan!  Even though I do not plan on seeking bank financing, I am really happy that I decided to do a business plan.  It is making me be sure that I have considered all situations.  This should reduce surprises later on.  The drawback is I really want to get started, but I am forcing myself to finish the plan before I do anything else.   Currently I am down to all of the financial projections in the plan.  The start-up costs, revenue projections, P&L projections, etc. 

I had some fun looking at kegs, and was surprised to find that so many different options exist.  Both the new and used keg market appears to be pretty large.  I like the idea of new kegs better than used as they should have a longer life.   The big thing appears to be leasing programs.  Many place offer lease or rent to own offers on kegs.  At first I thought this was going to be a bad deal, where you pay so many times the cost of the keg over a couple of years.  However, as I looked into this I found I was wrong.  The leasing programs appear to be fair deal, and something I might consider. 

What really surprised me was the cost to buy new custom kegs.  It is not much more to have your logo stamped into the side of the keg than to just buy the plain kegs.  Of course it does add up as you buy more kegs, so the total expense is still more.  It is also an extra expense that might not be needed for a new company, but it was still surprising to me.  They do make the kegs look cool, so it is something to consider.  Lots of companies offer printing of the logo on the side of the keg.  That is nice too, but to have the logo stamped into the metal is pretty cool.  Given that, I am a start up I will probably go with the printing. 

I also really liked the plastic keg idea, especially in the 1/6 barrel size.  They are lighter and can come in some cool colors.  If you plan on buying new kegs, you can custom order the tops and sides in different colors.  I am seriously considering this option, but need to do a little more research on how well they hold up and the lifespan of a keg. 

 I need to find some reviews of different manufactures and use that to help me decide.  With so many different suppliers, I think it will make the most sense to get a number of bids and use those to help decide what options to go with.

Cans vs. Bottles - Which is better?

Like everyone else, I have noticed that more and more beers are sold in cans.  Craft beers in cans seem to be the new fad.  When I was out in Colorado last November, I asked at one bar "what they had in bottles."  The server gave me a very dirty look and said they only have cans.  To me can or bottle was not the point; I just wanted to know what else they had since I had tried all the draft beers.  But this got me thinking, why the switch to cans?  Based on that experience I was guessing it was some type of benefit to the environment.  So I decided to do some research to find out.

As I looked into this, it turns out that breweries have a lot of reasons to switch to cans from bottles.  Cans keep more light out, they are lighter and less expensive to ship than bottles.  For small breweries they are less expensive to buy and they don’t have a separate labeling process.  People can take a can into more places since glass bottles are banned some places.  In addition a number of places listed that it is better to use aluminum because it is less energy to recycle compared to glass. 

Then I found some drawbacks.  OK, really just one.  All the cans have to be lined to prevent the beer from picking up a metallic taste.  The liner is a form of epoxy and contains BPA.  Now, the EPA says that the level of BPA in each can is pretty low and therefore should not be an issue.  But BPA is linked to cancer and other diseases.  To me, this seems like a pretty big drawback.  Maybe the energy savings offset this?

So, I decided to look into the energy use and recycling of cans and bottles.  It was very easy to find out that it is much more energy efficient to recycle aluminum than to create new aluminum from bauxite.  It takes 5% of the energy to recycle it as to create new.  So that’s a great benefit!  However, I also found out that only 30% of aluminum is recycled.   Mining new bauxite to create aluminum destroys rain forests and uses a lot of energy.  But I guess saving on 30% is better than nothing. 

I wanted to compare that to bottles.  In research, I found that Bottles contain no BPA, except for the liner in the cap.  A much lower amount than in the can, but still some BPA so that is not the best news.  

On the energy side, it is again a different story.  To recycle glass bottles, it uses 50% less energy than to create new.  So Aluminum is a 95% reduction and glass is only a 50% reduction.  Glass has a 80% recycle rate compared to aluminum’s 30%.  This was all great information, but I had no idea what the numbers added up to.  80%, 30%, 50% of what?!

I needed to find out how much actual energy is needed to create each one.  After doing some research, I found that it takes (on average) 79,000 watt hours to create 1 kg of aluminum cans today and 5800 watt hours to make 1 kg of glass beer bottles.  That is a big difference!  Then I remembered that a can weighs a lot less than a bottle.  After you account for the difference in weight of each one can takes 1119 watt hours to create and one beer bottle takes 1154 watt hours to create.  So a can saves 35 watt hours.  That is 119 btus, or about 1/10 of a cent at current energy prices.  That is not a big difference per can/ bottle.  You figure on some waste and that these are averages and they basically use the same amount of energy. 

After all of that, it appears that the real difference comes down to saving the brewery some money on shipping.  Once you factor in the BPA, I am not sure it is really worth the little bit of energy savings.  I am sure others will disagree, but I think I prefer to stick with bottles. 

Brewing Equipment

I am slipping and not posting here as often as I had planned.  I guess I have been too busy and need to set aside time to work on this. 

As I have been researching costs to start up a brewery, I have spent some time looking at brewing equipment.  At a high level the equipment is no different than home brewing, it is just larger.  However, like home brewing, I found a lot of different suppliers and different types of equipment. 

One great resource I have found is Pro Brewer (www.probrewer.com).  They have a lot of links to other sites and great tips on what to look into when selecting equipment.  Another resource is the Brewers Association (www.brewersassociation.org).  

With such a large number of different suppliers, I will be able to pick the size system I want and also have some options down the road for expansion or any equipment upgrades. 

I have also taken advantage of numerous message boards to get reviews and opinions of the different suppliers.  That has become a great source to find out details about build and shipping times as well as quality of equipment.  It is much better than trial and error.

Right now, I do not want to mention any particular supplier or brand of equipment.  That will come later once I actually place an order.   

Busy Week

What a busy week, its been awhile since I made a post.  Not sure if anyone noticed, but I thought I would get a quick post in now.
I have been finalizing my business plan this past week.  I found a great resouce, Score.org.   They have lots of great resources for small businesses.  I have found their templates to be great since they provide a basic template, plus lots of tips on how to do things.  One great feature is that they have nice ideas on how to customize everything to fit the business you want and not just their notion of what a business plan or anything else should look like. 
I did manage to have some good beers this past week. I hope everyone else has been enjoying some beer with this great weather we have been having. 

Equipment Choices

One item I keep going back and forth on is what size equipment I want to go with.  There are many different options to go with; you can find brewing systems in many different sizes from 2 – 20+ barrels (“bbl”).  At this point, I have ruled out anything larger than 15 bbl. 

After size of brewing the next question is what size fermenter.   I could match the fermenter to the brew kettle or I could double it and double brew every brew day.  The latter gives the option of less expense on the brew system, but allows greater output.  However, the drawback is consistently longer brew days (probably 12 hours vs 6.)

For the brewing system, I decided to look at what output I want to do.  Overall my goal is to have fun with this, and keep it manageable.  So I first looked at the 2 – 5 bbl range.  If I brew weekly, that would let me produce between 100 and 250 bbls a year.  This seems pretty good, and is about where I want to be on output.   However, if I move up to a 10 – 15 bbl system, I could brew once a month and hit the same output.   This got me really thinking about operations and what I want to do. 

Some other considerations:

2 – 5 bbl system
-        Brew more often
-        Can brew greater variety of beers over short period of time
-        Lower upfront capital cost
-        More labor from brewing more often
-        If demand is great, would require brewing much more often or upgrading equipment

10 – 15 bbl system
-        Brew less often
-        Larger volume of each beer, but longer to get multiple beers into production
-        Higher upfront capital cost
-        Less time spent brewing each month
-        If demand is great, can easily scale up by brewing more often

To me, the big points are capital and how often I want to brew.  I really want to get a few different types of beers out. 

Currently, I am leaning towards the smaller system with multiple fermenters.  If demand increases, I will step up to a larger fermenter and double batch to increase output.  This option seems to keep the capital cost down, but still allow some scalability.  I also really want to be able to get a few different beers out at the start.  Brewing smaller batches weekly will let me do that and should still leave me time for my day job. 

Additional thoughts

Some more thoughts on the brewing license.

I have not become discouraged at all, but it showed me that I need to be more thoughtful and serious about my plans. 

My original thought was, “can I get a license to be able sell my beer for fun?”  I would be willing to spend a little just be able to sell some beer here and there.  Once you add in the cost and details of a license, you really need to sell a certain amount to break even.  You have rent, utilities, taxes, and insurance in addition to the cost of making the beer.  At that point, it becomes more than just a hobby and turns into a business.  At that point I think you need to make sure it turns a profit (even if it is a small one.)

With that thought, I turned my attention to what it would take to put an actual small business together.  I know I don’t like to take too much risk, but realized that I will have to take some with this idea.  If I am going to do that, I need to make sure that I have done my homework so the risk is manageable.   I also realize that I work slowly due to the potential risk, but I am very grateful to my friends who keep pushing me to move forward. 

Brewing License

Before I get into where I am in the process, I thought I should review what I have learned about getting a brewing license. 

Going into this I knew that Ohio has some old laws regarding beer, wine, and liquor, but did not know any of the details.  I was happy to discover that Ohio has recently made some changes and now offers a craft beer license for anyone who is going to brew 31 million gallons or less per year.  It is only $1000 per year and I can’t see me exceeding that volume anytime soon!

I was surprised to find that you have to pay the state $50 for each new beer you brew.  This is to register each beer you sell.  Someone who once worked for the Ohio Department of Liquor control told me that this is essentially self-reported and they have no way of really tracking if you have done this or not.  That being said, I guess $50 is a small fee for each new beer and probably worth it in case that guy was wrong. 

Ohio also has a “no tied houses” law.  This means that you can own no more than one of; retail store selling alcohol, bar or restaurant selling alcohol, or manufacturer of alcoholic beverage.  The only exception is a brew pub license where you could brew beer and operate a restaurant together. 

My next surprise was to find out that you need both a federal and state license to brew beer.  This is true even if you are only going to sell within the state.  The State of Ohio will not even process your application until the Federal Government (TTB) has issued you a brewing license.  The good news is that the Federal is free.  The really good news is that the TTB says they are currently processing the applications in an average of 110 days.  That’s almost 4 months.  With your applications you have to have your lease signed (with an agreement showing the landlord knows you are going to brew beer) and a diagram of you equipment set up.  So you need to be all in when you apply.  Then it will be over four months until you can legally start to brew. 

So I figure it will be at least six months from the date of the lease being signed to when I can sell my first beer.  This information slowed me down and made me realize that I need to take a little more time.  So I have spent the past 6 months refining my business plan and researching costs (more on that later).  I want to make sure I have every question answered before I sign a lease, purchase equipment, and fill out the license applications

Website is live!

I have finally given in to the constant urging of my friends and purchased the domain name for Bexley Brewing Company.  I hope this is the first step to producing commercial craft beer.  For now it is just a website, but I will log my process of opening a small craft brewery here.

www.bexleybrewingcompany.com