hmmmmm.
Pretty good deal. Especially considering you don’t have to wait.
Sounds like a good deal for new-unused. The expansion bug catching ya?
Worry about the non-jacketed fermenters though. I guess that isn’t needed in your neck of the woods?
If I had $18,000 lying about, I would totally buy it.
Then again, I also have nowhere to put it.
Sounds a bit like a white elephant.
That is a pretty good price. I was just visiting a 3BBL brewery in Northern AZ using Stout Tanks (Granite Mountain Brewing in Prescott) and he has non-jacketed fermenters, not even in a walk in. He has not had any issues to date, but he said he runs the AC and will even wrap them in wet towels if they start going crazy. I guess you can get away with that with only 3BBLs. Glacier Tanks has some pricing similar to Stout on the 3BBL size, but not sure what the wait time is.
I had unjacketed 3bbl tanks when we first started (plastic tanks at that) and we kept them in the cold room wrapped with heat wraps and insulation and we could keep the temp at whatever we needed.
Just remember, you’ll need another 15-20 grand to build out your brewery (walk-in, build wet area, run gas/plumbing/electric, etc.).
Then you’ll need at least 10K in kegs to have enough cooperage to actually run a 3bbl brewery.
Instead of the cooperage how about a small canning or bottling line? Not that I have any practical experience at all but from listening to JZ on BS it seems to me that a packaging brewery is the way to go and much more profitable. Then you have no kegs to clean or to worry about keeping track of.
If you’re bottling, your per unit margin goes down pretty significantly. Glass is expensive, I imagine cans are cheaper, but you’d have to amortize the cost of the machinery, and I think canning lines are more expensive than bottling lines. So a packaging brewery would make sense if you can produce a large number of units. But if there’s no slack in your production capacity, it doesn’t make sense to divert production from a high margin product (beer on draft) toward a low margin product (bottles/cans).
JZ calculated 1 cent profit per oz in the keg and 6 cents per oz in bottles.
Our margins on bottled beer is significantly higher than on draft, but I can’t imagine the labor involved on a part time operation if you had to bottle all of your beers.
You can get a semi manual set up (4 head filler, pneumatic capper, labeler) for about 15K. Bottles have a significant price break in bulk, as do labels.
Euge - are you talking about selling kegs wholesale to bars, or selling beer on draft in your taproom? I have a hard time believing JZ is making $4.32 profit on a six pack, and a hard time believing he’s not making more than $20 profit per keg. But I have no idea how he’s amortizing his expenses, or if he’s only talking about variable costs, or which fixed costs he’s including.
$0.06 * 72oz = $4.32 profit per 6-pack
$0.01 * 1984oz = $19.84 profit per keg
Keith - are you talking about selling in your own tap room, or wholesale kegs?
I don’t know nat- just what he said. I’m assuming it is net profit after deducting everything else.
I don’t have a tap room. All retail sales. Since we are technically not permitted to talk price on the forum I will refrain from giving the run down but profit on bottles is about twice as good as retail keg sales.
There’s no doubt we need a bigger system. We’re brewing 2-3 times a week, and saying no to new accounts. I’ve got a line on some pots to triple our capacity for under a grand, so soon we’ll be getting that. And temperature control is important here. Yearly temps range from 30-80 in the brewery. And while that’s very mild for most humans, not so much for those wonderful yeasties.
I’m trying to wrap my head around those figures.
bottle profit = $0.06 = bottle revenue (B) - beer cost (c) - bottling cost (bc)
keg profit = $0.01 = keg revenue (k) - c - keg cost (kc)
so
0.01 = k - c - kc
0.06 = b - c - bc
c = k - kc - 0.01
0.06 = b - k + kc + 0.01 - bc
0.05 = b - k + kc - bc
Assuming a keg sells for between $80-$120, with a 15% margin, and selling direct to bars/liquor stores
$120/1.15>(k1984)>$80/1.15 = 0.053>k>0.035
$10>(b72)>$8 = 0.12>b>0.096
So for direct to retail
-0.017 < kc - bc < -0.011
So, kegging is cheaper for JZ than bottling.
Assuming the same as above, and that he’s selling to a wholesaler who also gets a 15% cut
($120/1.15)/1.15>(k1984)>($80/1.15)/1.15 = 0.046>k>0.030
$10>(b72)>$8 = 0.105>b>0.084
For wholesale
-0.009 < kc - bc < -0.004
Kegging is still cheaper for JZ than bottling.
I guess that was a waste of time, since I think we all knew kegging would be cheaper, but it doesn’t appear to be a huge price difference, per ounce. C would be a constant regardless of whether you bottle or keg.
I now believe Keith that bottling is about twice as profitable, per ounce.
Yes the bottle/can market has a better margin then keg market. But you want to be in both. Keg market is your advertising that you have arrived and people can have your beer when they go out to the bar or restaurant. You make bulk of the money in bottle market because there is more people who want to have beer at home then go to the bar/restaurant. If you are in bottle market you need to be carefully to pick the package that fits to you.
It is great the 22 oz has high profit margin but if you sell only a case a month then it is not working. Brewing is still a number game after all. Bottle filler line + labeler cost about the same as a canning line.
Mic, don’t forget about the bottling trucks in our area, and I know a guy who is running canning trucks out of Portland. When I saw him in June he was talking about having a canning truck in our area too. I know it’s a long drive out to you, but it’s cheaper than buying your own canning/bottling line. You might even be able to bring kegs to Seattle for re-packaging. It’s not a good long term solution obviously, but it’s a good way to package a lot of beer quickly and check out the market interest.
Tom, I heard about a portable canning line in a truck when visiting friends in Bend. Might be the same guy?
You are correct sir. I just place PO for manual canning line. I am exited and scared at the same time. Nothing is cheap in brewing.