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.