If you were opening a brewery...

Hoppy IPA - my favorite style
Wheat - appreciated by many
Kolsch - drinkable, broad appeal

Something for everyone and a fair diversity.

If people didn't buy them, I would certainly drink them

 

No firkin Fridays option? What da hells?

 

Kolsch
Stout
IPA

Kolsch is very important to have for former BMC drinkers and people that want a lighter beer in general. Lager/Pils seems like a good option but depending on your brewing set up are generally more difficult and expensive to brew because of the cold fermentation required, that is why Kolsch is a good alternative. Then I would say a dark beer porter/stout and obviously an IPA of some form.

 

Would I be opening this fictitious brewery with the idea of what sells well and making a profit or would I be opening it to please my self? Those things would almost certainly be mutually exclusive.

If I was pleasing myself with it I'd have a stout, a porter and a fruit beer.

If I was trying to make money I'd have an IPA, a hoppy IPA, and a rotating seasonal option.

 

Session / common
Porter
Belgo/French.
Lagers would be great, but it's a time cost versus available real estate cost issue.
To get going, I'd want styles that don't take very long to turnaround and are approachable yet still fun for us to brew, learn more about, and to drink too. There's also adaptability between the aforementioned styles that there's at least few more beers available just from riffing on the base beers.

 

I chose Pale, Stout, and Wheat thinking that I would want beers I could turn quickly and start paying some bills

Also, you could use those as a nice base and start playing with fruit beers (wheat, stout), barrel aging (stout), and dry hopping or firkins (pale ale).

After gaining some credibility and a customer base I'd venture into the hoppier and bigger beers.

I'm in Central OH and we have a ton of new and established excellent breweries so I'd have to turn out some solid stuff to keep people interested. Needless to say, I won't be quitting my day job any time soon but it's fun to dream!!

 

Me too. The responses look more like the question was "If you were to take up homebrewing..." The more sensible responses recognize it's more about what the masses will like and buy. You gotta be able to keep the lights on before you can introduce your specials and seasonals. I also believe you must succeed in your local market first. Your core beer lineup should reflect the climate. I feel an imperial stout would be a shelf turd in central Texas for most of the year. I went with a hoppy IPA because it is an expectation, a wheat, and a pilsner/lager because it's warm here most of the year and I happen to like those styles myself.

 

Maybe the imperial stout but we have a couple local brewpubs here that make an approachable 6-7% stout (more American Stout) that the masses who have had Guinness will try. They are very good sellers.

The general public does have some carnal knowledge of better beers these days. Again, a stout gives you a good base beer that you can play around with and appeal to the casual as well as hard-core advocate.

 

I went

IPA 7.5
Stout 6%
and Pilsner

 

Wheat beer for the ladies. My wife HATES going to places with no beers that aren't hopped up (and hence, I rarely get to go to said places either). Then the pale and the stout to start on the two taps. Then I'd branch out to sours, porters, etc.

 

Here in SoFL, I'd do something like:

- Farmhouse ale 5% abv
- Brett pale ale 4.5% abv
- Gose 5% abv

 

100% correct

 

US 2013 sales of Guinness stout, the overwhelming stout sales leader, amounted to @ $90m.....slightly south of the Mexican brand Tecate http://www.statista.com/statistics/188728/top-imported-beer-brands-in-the-united-states/

Not the beer of the masses that you might think.

If you want to make a stout because you like stout, it's your prerogative. But it wouldn't necessarily make sense, business-wise

 

If you brew great beer they will come!!! I'm thinking brew what you enjoy and it might/maybe make things easier in the beginning.....

 

As some have already said, you have to appeal to your audience and a lot of people only like dark beers. A lot of people also don't enjoy hops so you have to also have something sweeter or light and crisp. That's why I chose

7.5% IPA
6% Stout
Belgian/French Ale

The IPA and stout are definitely but I was torn between Belgian and Kolsch because I knew I needed something non-bitter. I went with Belgian because I personally think they're more complex than Kolsches and I enjoy them more.

 

Describes my feelings to a T. Brewers should use their skills to create their art - what they love to brew and drink. If you do it right, with passion and quality, you can make any brewery successful. Brewers should not just produce based on the general market preference because there will be a market for any quality beer they produce.

For me, that would mean 7% IPA, 9% stout, and berliner weisse. But that may be different for each person who starts a brewery.

One caveat - if the initial market the brewer is serving will likely only want or strongly prefer certain styles, it might make business sense to create those styles as the flagship beers. But hopefully the brewer can create special, non-flagship beers they love to make to introduce the market to those styles as well.

 

to my mind, there are two approaches a new brewery can take: brew what will sell, or brew what you want. in the first case, you need to ask the people who will be buying the beer (i.e. your local patrons). in the second case, you don't need to ask anyone.

in neither case do you need to ask an online forum of beer nerds that don't reflect your customers' wants, or your own abilities/penchants/etc.

 

There seems to be two different trains of thought here for the most part.
The brew what will be the easiest, and make the most money crowd.
And the brew what you have a passion for crowd.
Personally I would much rather visit a brewery that has a passion for brewing great beer, as opposed to a brewery that is just worried about paying the bills, or developing a cash cow.

 

sours and IPA's...oh wait RR does this lol

 

Ugh... presumably I'd need an IPA, but mine never turn out well. I've had better luck with koelsch, stout, and Berliner.