Hello, fellow brewers!
I’m starting a brewery here in Brazil and we’re debating which beers to put on tap. Since this forum is international, I’d love to hear your suggestions on what you think is cool and essential to have in a brewpub.
We’re open to everything, whether it’s recipes or just style recommendations. To give you an idea, we have 8 taps available, so there’s room for variety.
Looking forward to your input!
Cheers, and long live beer! 
Assuming you aren’t doing this just for fun, I would get my finger on the local beer pulse and make sure at least half the taps will sell. If IPAs are big in your area, have a few IPAs!
Then I would concentrate on your brewing strengths. Good beer, hopefully, will sell itself.
And maybe a tap to have fun with and play around with one-off brews.
Better answers will follow.
Best of luck!
I own and run a small brewery. Seasonal offerings are a huge draw. Right now our biggest seller is our Oktoberfest. We also have a hazy IPA is always one of our top sellers and customers freak out when we run out while I scramble to brew it again. Even though it is Alabama (unbearably hot for over 1/3 of the year, why the hell do I live here?) we keep 2 dark beers on tap at all times.
One thing to consider is your water. It’s best to pick a few flagship styes that match your water–they will often be your best beers. The brewery I own now has relatively low alkalnity so I brew a few more pale beers like Helles and Pils. The brewery I started in 2010 (that I am not longer part of) had higher alkalinity and I had a reddish beer as its flagship.
Other than that, people like novelty here. I, however, do not – I enjoy standard styles, most often German and Belgian. But I have to keep a few novelty beers on tap to fill that niche. I have a small 1bbl pilot system that helps feed that department.
I’d recommend using local ingredients if possible–I imagine Brazil has a lot of really interesting fruits and local produce that would pair nicely with beer.
Hope that helps! Good luck with your brewpub!
It’s hard to say what will do best in your area. As an American, if I went to a Brazilian brew pub, I’d hope to see at least one beer using local fruit. But what will work best in your area is going to depend a lot on your local clientele.
In my area I’d guesstimate an average 8-tap brewery would have 2-3 IPAs of various types (hazy, west-coast, double, extra ingredient like fruit, etc.), one or two fruit beers (often one being a fruited sour), a dark beer or two (stout/porter), a pilsner, a light beer that is accessible for people who only drink mass-market lagers (light lager, cream ale, kolsch, blonde ale, etc.), and then a rotating/seasonal tap or two.
I’d shoot for having several base recipes that can be modified simply. For example, you could have a blonde ale that also works as a base for fruit beer, a stout that can also be the base for a coffee/chocolate/pastry stout. A couple of IPA recipes that you can tweak the hopping strategy on, etc. This way you have recipes that you know work well on your system, but still let you provide a variety for people who are looking for the next new thing.
Well, assuming you are doing all ales (which probably makes sense from a production standpoint considering energy costs and equipment, etc.), here is what I’d probably want to see/expect to sell:
I would add a black lager to the list…just because I had a really good black lager from South America…
Was it Xingu by any chance?
Indeed, it was Xingu.