Striking Out... with Contract Brewers

Are you a licensed brewery, beer marketing company, or something like that?

 

Then, to my knowledge, a contract brewery will not be able to brew beer for you.

 

Try High Point in Butler NJ. I know they brew for other breweries. Don't know if they can handle 500 cases.

 

so you want 12,000 cans or 144,000 oz or 1,125 gallons or 36.29 barrels of beer. Do you have a recipe that you are planning on having them brew? Scaling it to a professional system doesn't always work out. I would think the route to go would be to work with a local brewer that had capacity and have him tune the recipe, then brew it on his system and can it and you buy it from him like a distributor. Not sure if this would work, but you might find a taker. Plus if you went this route with a smaller brewer you might could take delivery of the beer in smaller increments. 500 cases is a lot of beer to unload at once

 

What style of beer do want made? That could make a difference too.

Cheers!

 

Other than saying that you are "marketing a new beer" you have not specifically answered if you are looking for a place to brew a recipe that you already have. If you don't have a recipe but are marketing some 'gimmick' beer, an option might be to have a brewery bottle some of one of their beers but put your private label and generic caps on the batch.

 

Yes

 

I know this doesn't answer your question, but how you want to do this makes a difference. Are you trying to make money or just doing this for kicks? If you want to make money and haven't already researched this, there are some tax, ownership and responsibility differences.

What you are doing may take two forms; contract or tenant brewing. As a Tenant, you will pay a lower tax rate and you will own the recipe but you will also be reponsible for record-keeping. If you contract brew, they own the recipe, they do the record-keeping and you have to compensate the brewer for the tax they pay at their rate which will be higher. If you contract instead of tenant, you also want to think about if the brewer you use is also a wholesaler; they pay taxes at a higher rate.

More detail on what I reference is here: https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.co...wing-regulatory-licensing-tax-considerations/

 

Because you don't possess the proper licensing. Did you tell them that you did were not licensed when you received the quotes?

 

The latest issue of BeerAdvocate magazine has an article on contract brewers. Maybe that will help you with some of the names mentioned there.

 

Dorchester Brewing near Boston has a 60 BBL minimum which, if my math is correct, is closer to your desired amount than what you were quoted so far.

http://www.dorchesterbrewing.com/brew-with-us/

I don't know too much about them but contract brewing is pretty much their whole reason for existence from what I understand.

 

According to the TTB (Ruling 2005-02), he would not have to be licensed as a brewer, but would need a wholesale or retail license (so, essentially a private label deal).

A contract brewing arrangement is a business relationship in which one person, such as a wholesale or retail dealer or a brewer, pays a brewing company, the “contract brewer,” to produce beer for him or her. The contract brewer is entirely responsible for producing the beer, keeping appropriate brewery records, labeling the beer with its name and address, obtaining necessary certificates of label approval (COLAs), and paying tax at the appropriate rate upon removal of the beer from the brewery. The contract brewer retains title to the beer at least until the beer is taxpaid or removed from the brewery. TTB considers contract brewing arrangements to be ordinary commercial arrangements.
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Yes they are.