Tales from the other side

OK y'all! Been gone for a while, but my task is complete - I've opened my own brewery.

I loved and continue to love this forum for bouncing ideas and learning. I learned so much from so many. Names that immediately jump out are VikeMan (duh), hopfenunmaltz, JackHorzempa, and utahbeerdude, with many others providing excellent commentary and feedback. Thank you.

I wanted to try to pay it back by answering any and all questions regarding scaling homebrew batches to commercial batches. Myself and my partner started with nothing but 5-10 gallon batches and scaled directly to 20 barrels now. We've scaled everything fairly successfully - with some (relatively minor) setbacks along the way of course.

Let me know what questions you have and I'll try my best to answer as specifically as I can without giving too any secrets away. Cheers!

 

Thanks everyone!

We currently make as our annuals a hoppy American blonde, a brown ale with rye, and an IPA. We made a late fall seasonal using local malts, local hops, local apple cider, brown sugar, flaked oats and spices. Just getting ready to keg an Oatmeal Stout with homemade vanilla extract added prior to kegging. Note: we homebrewed the same recipes over and over again for years to perfect them, and I would advise this for any homebrewers thinking of taking the leap. With so many choices, we felt it was important to make great beer from the start. The stout we made 12 times to get it right.
We will have a tap room! It's under construction still. 8-12 beers on at all times. We still homebrew in the brewery! We'll double batch 10 gallon batches and fill four sixtel kegs. I prefer (at this point) to test all experimental recipes before scaling up. We just made an Imperial Smoked porter this way - came out great, requires a few small tweaks then ready for the big time.

Other then fermentation, I was the most worried about scaling hop utilization. I was very concerned about brewing an over bitter IPA with no hop aroma or flavor. I checked the #s a few different ways. I used BS2 with utilization set at 125% and accounted for time spent in whirlpool and rest as boiling. (ie a homebrew 60 minute boil would be a 90 minute boil in the large system). I also kept the late hop additions and dry hop additions linear from homebrew to large scale. This achieved what I was looking for: a lot of hop flavor and aroma, firm but not overpowering bitterness. If anything I think I was too conservative; we are looking at slowly increasing the hop bittering charge.

I create a weekly schedule for brewhouse, each of our 5 fermenters, our brite tank, as well as filling, and the occasional pilot batch. There is something to do (or, many things to do) on every day of the week. I also try to plot out our production a month ahead of time to make sure I get materials in. I began contracting hops almost a year before I needed them. Grain is easy to get, no contracts, usually takes less than a week to get it here.

Jeff - we've been working on this plan for 3.5 years. It took a year of feasibility, a year of looking for money, and a year and half to execute the plans. I have a family and had a full time job over that entire time, so stayed pretty busy. I didn't have time for local homebrew club meetings - which is the purpose this group filled. So again, thanks to all.

Finally, I'd be happy to share our brewery info over PM - I don't want to confuse this post with self-promotion. Send me a message and I'll give you the details. I'd love to meet all of you for a beer someday. Be checking in now and again for other questions to answer.

 

Oh and one more thing! @utahbeerdude will be happy to know that MpH calculator works pretty much perfectly from 5 gallons to 620 gallons. Best water tool there is, hands down.

 

You'd be surprised. For example, I know Cz Saaz are really hard to find right now as I'm actively looking for some. Hops are problematic. It took me months to find Cascades, and Cascade is like the second most prevalent hop grown in the US. We had to change up our whole IPA recipe due to hop availability. To get the hops I actually wanted (all the hops us homebrewers love: Citra, Amarillo, Centennial... Galaxy is like on a 5 year waiting list, and I haven't even bothered with Mosaic), I would have had to contract them even before the LLC was formed. Lesson is: start as early as you possibly can, and be prepared to possibly be disappointed.