It Feels Like We're Getting Close!

Hi Y’all, it’s been a while.  We are rapidly pulling the business plan together to present to our banker when we arrive in New Orleans at the end of December.  We’ve also hired a lawyer to help us finalize our Operating Agreement and develop our term sheet for potential investors.  We’re following the Private Placement Offering (PPO) sometimes referred to as the Private Placement Memorandum (PPM).   Unfortunately, we’ll need to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and we need to ensure we’re in compliance with state Blue Sky Laws.  The legalese is complicated but certainly manageable.



We have found the perfect property and it’s located in Mid City.  We’re working with the property owner to negotiate a deal that will give us some relief on the terms of the lease agreement should we not be able to get our Alcohol and Tobacco, Trade and Tax Bureau (TTB) permit and our non-conforming use permit from the City of New Orleans.   Manufacturing alcohol is capital intensive on the front end.  Basically, you can’t apply for any of your permits until you have a signed lease agreement or you own the property where your brewery will be located.  There is no way around this.



Our current plan is to present our business plan to our banker and lawyer at the end of January.  Have our lawyer finalize our Operating Agreement and develop our investor Term Sheet and then start raising capital.  In conjunction with this, we are hoping to sign the lease agreement on the great piece of property we’ve found.  Once the lease is signed, we’ll file the TTB papers and start the NOLA permitting process.  If the stars align, Mark will head to New Orleans in June to receive our brewery and we’ll have our brewery and tap room up and operating by January 1, 2015.  Happy New Year’s Y’all.



We’re planning on selling a lot of draft and “bombers”.  We’re also looking at a canning line.



Well, I’d better get back to finalizing the business plan.

Cheers Y’all!



Karen

Financing the Brewery

Hi Y’all,

Happy Thanksgiving to you!  We’re in Seattle doing some recon on good craft beer.  We’ve been to several choice restaurants and the numbers of local brews that are available is really impressive.  Perhaps one day, Louisiana and NOLA will have as many offerings.

 

We’re chugging along on the business plan.  We head to New Orleans on December 29^th and we want to meet with our banker at First Bank and Trust to discuss financing.  We found some great help at score.org.   It’s a website dedicated to free small business advice.   One of our larger challenges is figuring out the profitability and company worth.  We have a few gaps – we need quotes for insurance – business interruption, worker’s compensation, inventory, etc.  We hope to get those by the end of next week.  The other challenge is developing the pro forma without a piece of real estate.  And, speaking of real estate – the $500k question is do we lease or buy?  Again, we’re huge fans of buying but that will lock up some cash.

 

As soon as the pro forma is complete, we’ll meet with our legal team in New Orleans; they’re going to help us put together a term sheet so we can go out and raise money through a Private Placement Offering (PPO) or a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM).  They’re the same.  We need to figure out where we want to price the offering.  We’re hoping the legal team can help with this.

 

Our logo is almost finished, our designer Jennifer Carbuto has been doing a great job.  When the logo is complete we’ll get Secondlinebrewing.com up and running.

 

Cheers for now y’all,

 

Karen

Here's an Interesting Article

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/blog/2013/11/lakefront-brewery-bringing-back.html

The Business Plan. Part 2.

Here’s and update on where we are with the business plan.  We submitted it to the Oregon State competition and apparently there are better writers out there; we didn’t win.  Ho hum.  We did receive very positive feedback.  And in the meantime, we’ve been busting a hump day and night working on updating the business plan.
Here are the basics of the plan:

 

1. Executive Summary


2. Company Overview (who, what, where, when, why)


3. Products and Services


4. Beer Market Analysis


5. Our Market Segmentation


6. Demand


7. Demographics, Etc.


8. Industry Analysis


9. Our Business Strategy


10. Our Marketing Strategy (lots of stuff on social networking!)


11. Operations (including HR!)


12. And…  Profitability - we’re still working the end.

 

Our goal is to have our completed business plan to our banker by December 15^th for a face-to-face meeting in early January.

The business plan is a labor of love.  The more we read and learn, the more we want to keep updating the business plan.  The line in the sand will be drawn on December 15^th for the banker.  The line will be erased on December 16^th as we progress.

 

We’ve got a lead on a piece of property.  It may be a financial leap but it’s all that we could ask for and more.  Ten thousand square feet of light industrial warehouse space in a “hot” part of New Orleans.

 

More to come y’all!

 

Karen

The 2013 hops have arrived!

Hi Y’all,

We’re excited; a 2013 batch of hops have arrived.  The new hops include:

• Motueka


• Nelson Sauvin (did I go to grammar school with him?)


• Centennial


• Simcoe


• Amarillo

Let the brewing begin.  Tomorrow we’re going to brew our third batch of a session beer.  The beer will be a ‘session white IPA’.  I’m thirsty just thinking about it!

On another front, we’ve signed the non-disclosure agreement and letter of intent with our brewer (AKA Parade King) and with our Chief Spiritual Officer (AKA Cardinal Beer Goddess).  We’ve asked both of them to send us their bio and a picture – we’ll post it on the “About Us” page when we get their information.

We’ve done an amazing job at cleaning up the business plan since our trip to Bend.  We’ve broken down the details and Mark has hit it out of the ballpark working on the market research section.  While I always knew Louisiana was desperate for some local brew, the market research helps reinforce our mission:  Louisiana has space for some additional craft breweries that produce great craft beer!

The Cardinal Beer Goddess lives in New Orleans and her current mission is to find a space for the brewery.  May the beer goddess spirits be with her. Industrial real estate in New Orleans is expensive and it sure would be nice to find a space that is in a well-traveled area so that our beer-consuming friends will find it easy to drop in for a taste of a cold brew on their way home or out.

We went through the Pro-forma today and it looks promising.  Thanks to all of our fellow brewers that have posted great information on various websites.  We love the craft brewing community’s willingness to share.

What’s next?  We’re working on recruiting a couple of mentors.  I’ll let y’all know how that goes in a couple of weeks.

Cheers,

The Grand Mistress

What does it take to start a Brewery?

[caption id="attachment_142" align="alignnone" width="225"] http://www.blackberryfarm.com/brewery/landing[/caption]

Well, those were our thoughts several months ago.  We’ve been figuring it out one day at a time.  Outside of financing and good beer, it takes a management team and that is what we’ve been focused on for the last few weeks.  Here’s what we’ve come up – Chief Operating Officer (aka The Toots), Chief Executive Officer (aka the Grand Mistress), Brewmaster (aka Parade King) and finally Chief Spiritual Officer (aka Cardinal Beer Goddess).   No doubt there will be others such as Chief Safety Officer (aka Save the Day) and Human Resources Director (aka Hugs-a-Lot).

We’re assembling the team and working out the legalese and that my friends takes time.

On the personal front, I was traveling last week and had the chance to taste some great beer.  I had the Great Divide IPA while I was in Colorado and Tennessee’s Blackberry Farm - Farm Ale.  Both were delicious.  I had hoped to get a tour of Blackberry Farm’s brewhouse but it was all work and no play…  insert sad face here.

Well y’all, its another Friday and TGIF!  Please support your local craft beer company and drink some tasty craft beer.  And of course, leave fat tips for the servers!

Cheers for now,

The Grand Mistress

Happy Winter to Everyone!

Hi Y’all,
We’re still in Anchorage churning the business plan.  We had our first snow today which is quite late for Anchorage; in general there is snow on the ground by Halloween.  So have you been wondering what we’ve been up to?  Well, it doesn’t take a whole lot to figure us out – it’s the business plan.

 

Mark continues to pull together the market research and I’ve been doing my best to refine the numbers.  Thus far, we’ve spoken with our banker, two lawyers and have interviewed several marketing people and brewmasters.  We’ve learned a lot.  For starters there are a lot of talented people in the brewing world.  If you build it, they will come.  Second, the legalize is a bitch.  Third, we’re closer than ever.

 

Mark talked to our banker last week and the banker thinks we won’t have an issue getting a loan.  Great news.  Now we need to figure out if we are going to lease or own the property.  For those of you who know me know that I am a firm believer of leveraging in order to own real estate.  What never loses value in New Orleans?  Real estate – even after Hurricane Katrina real estate prices continued to rise.  So now we need to search high and low for that perfect location.

 

Brewhouses – man there are a bunch of options out there.  We’re headed to Seattle for Thanksgiving and that will be our opportunity to check out the brewhouse manufactures.  I’ve printed a map, if all goes well, we’ll try and hit at least one brewery per day…

 

Ok, I guess I’ve rambled on enough.  What do we need help on?  I’ll tell you, figuring out the number of kegs per tap handle account is a challenge.  If any of you probrewers  are out there reading this, I sure could use some help.
Cheers for now,

Karen

Next Steps

So you may be wondering what the next step is in our journey…  well, here’s what I’m thinking.  First, find the right business partner / brewmaster.  We are working that.  Second, find the right business partner / Sales and Marketing Director.  We posted that job today on probrewer.com and another website.  Hopefully, that will get some traction.

 

After finding the right business partners, we’ll need to engage with our Legal Team.  Our Operating Agreement will have to be updated and finalized.  Then our newly anointed partners will have to review and update the business plan with their knowledge.  No doubt a brewmaster and a sales and marketing professional will know more about those two subjects…

 

When the business plan becomes pretty true to what we envision as a team, it’s time for the funding to begin.  We’ll go out to our Fool network and ask for investors through what’s called a Private Placement Offering.  You may wonder what that means.  I know I did…  let’s just say its complicated and full of a bunch of legal jargon that references safe harbors for people who aren’t on boats.

 

There are some pretty specific rules around asking for people to invest, again bring in the legal team to ensure we are acting appropriately.

 

Upon receiving a funding level that will sustain the business, and we’re not talking peanuts, it will be time for us to take the leap as a business.  That means turning off the old jobs and turning on the new ownership in the brewery.

 

Well, it’s approaching beer thirty in Anchorage.  Cheers and happy Friday from a hopfool.

 

Making Progress!

Hi Y’all,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  You may wonder what we’ve been doing.  Well, Mark is working hard at getting our logo trademarked.  Apparently there are some hurdles and the trademark people need an education on their own law as well as the difference between a café and production brewery.  Mark promises to write a detailed post on his experience and learnings.

 

In addition, he has been hammering out the marketing section of the business plan.  He has really added some significant data on the competition and brewers located in the central south.  We plan to market our beer in Louisiana and should things go as planned, expand into Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.  The course in Bend did ground us somewhat.  What we realized was you have to have significant production to meet the demand, so perhaps a better strategy for us will be to try and meet the local market demand, and by local market we mean the Baton Rouge – New Orleans - Houma – Covington – Slidell areas.

 

We learned some other key points that will most likely be critical.  For example, most people buy beer at a store for at home consumption so bottling and canning are important.  Tap handles are hard to come by – as in space in bars; we thought the distributor worked with the bars to get the tap handle space.  In reality, we’ll need a sales team that goes out and meets with the bar owners so that the bar owners will request our beer through the distributor.  Basically, the middleman doesn’t have a whole lot to do except deliver the products to the seller and manage the inventory and the empty kegs…  Speaking of kegs, people who buy kegs for home consumption generally keep the keg for 8 – 10 weeks (unless of course it’s for a crawfish boil).  That means will need a bunch of kegs!  We were told 10 kegs for every account – we’ll work the math with our distributor.

 

Unfortunately, my day job has kept me somewhat busy and I haven’t had a whole lot of time to focus on the brewery.  My part of the business plan is finance.  With the help of my niece Amanda, I put together some pretty good financial statements now they have to be truth checked.  So what does that mean?  I need to call the utility companies in New Orleans and start to work on what the operating expense will be to more accurately project a breakeven point.  And, we need to start researching brewing equipment.  We’ve received multiple bid so now we need to compare and determine what this all means; it’s the apples to apples comparison that is a challenge.  One of the more important aspects of brewing is the equipment you use.  Apparently, the equipment will have an effect on the final product taste.  And, as a buyer, you really need to have a handle on the efficiency of the brewery. The more efficient the less it will cost to operate.  I think a lot of startups learn this the hard way.  Basically, people want to skimp on the cost of the brewery but they don’t understand the long-term impact of not spending 2 – 5% more in order to procure a more efficient brewhouse.

 

The one thing I’ve done in regards to the brewery is post an ad for a business partner / brewmaster.  I have received responses from several interested people; all of which are brewers and two of which already live in New Orleans.  That was a pleasant surprise.  We’re hoping to sign with a partner in the next few months.  We need the brewmaster to select the brewery equipment.  We’ve decided to leave that to the professional!

 

More to come in the near future.
Cheers for now craft beer fans,

 

Karen

 

 

Hitting the trail….in Louisiana

Greetings Hopfools,

Several friends brought to our attention the recent unveiling of the “Louisiana Craft Brewery Trail” by the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.  This website, developed in cooperation with the Louisiana Craft Brewers Guild, highlights Louisiana’s current craft breweries and provides a bit of background about each brewery as well as additional activities/points of interest in the nearby area.

I did notice that two Louisiana craft breweries were missing from the mix, Red River Brewing Company and Great Raft Brewing.  Both of these breweries are located in Shreveport, in the north west corner of the state.  And while they appear to be pretty far along in the process I suspect that the omission of these two breweries was due to the pending status of their permits and look forward to seeing their inclusion on the Louisiana Craft Brewery Trail shortly.  If you haven’t checked out the websites for these two breweries then I suggest that you do.  The blog from Great Raft Brewing is great and it has really been fun to follow their progress.

In the meantime, we are still waiting to hear the outcome of the business plan contest from our course in Bend, OR earlier this month.  In the meantime, various RFPs for equipment are trickling in, we’re submitting our LLC documents this week, the documents for the SBA are coming together and we continue to scout locations for a location in the New Orleans area.

As an aside, tasted our session IPA last night and was quite please; will need to change the mash schedule somewhat and add a bit more malt character but overall quite nice.

This weekend we’re brewing our pale ale to replenish our stores before the first tap for our session IPA (not everyone is concerned about ABV or calories).

Cheers,

Mark

Bend, Oregon Trip report

Greetings Hopfools,

Well, the last three weeks have been busy and productive.  Our trip to Bend, OR to attend the Oregon State University Craft Brewery Startup Workshop was great.

This was the first time this course was offered and is part of OSU’s Professional & Noncredit Education program.  There were ~40 participants with many others on a waiting list for cancellations.  There were attendees from as far away as Taiwan and Australia.  The participants were in various states of the process of opening either a brewpub or microbrewery.  Some of the attendees already owned brewpubs and were looking to make the transition to becoming a microbrewery.  Overall, the interaction and networking with the participants was almost as helpful and informative as the seminar itself.

The class was 4 ½ days and consisted of three blocks.  Leo Sharkey and Roger Woods conducted the first 2 ½ day block.  Leo Sharkey has a background in chemistry as well as an MBA and currently works for Siemens Water Technology.  Leo also serves as a mentor and coach at the Acara Institute and is an avid homebrewer.

Roger is senior lecturer at Michigan Technical University as well as a consultant specializing in helping startups, well start-up.  Like Leo, Roger is also a longtime home brewer.

Leo and Roger covered the following topics:

• Being an entrepreneur;


• How to write a business plan;


• Market research;


• Market resources;


• Accounting/finance;


• Microbrewery financial analysis;


• Risks and assumptions; and


• Strategy.

Leo and Roger where very accessible and offered some very valuable insights into the many nuts and bolts that go into to a craft beer business plan.  Overall it was very informative with much valuable feedback from Roger and Leo.

Roger and Leo have also agreed to review everyone’s business plan to select the one that they feel has taken the most away from the seminar.  The writer of the winning business plan receives a two-week paid internship at Ninkasi Brewing!  (We just submitted our plan this morning….fingers crossed.)

The second half of day 3 was devoted to the topic of sustainability.  Matt Shinderman did a great job but it was probably a bit more theory and information than was needed for this audience.

The management team of Ninkasi Brewing conducted the last 1.5 days.  I mean seriously, when was the last time you took a seminar and had the entire executive management team of an up-and-coming business devoted 1-½ days to tell you how to be successful.  Kudos to Ninkasi for sharing their time, insights and demonstrating one of the greatest aspects of the craft beer culture, commitment to community.

Ninkasi covered the following topics:

• History of Ninkasi;


• Ingredients and Materials Sourcing;


• Onboarding and Performance Management;


• Building a Company Culture;


• Managing growth;


• Sensory and Supporting Quality from Startup


• Trends and Opportunities; and


• Panel Q &A

Needless to say it was a great opportunity to hear how they have grown and all that they have learned along the way.  Jaime and Nikos, along with everyone on the Ninkasi team, were very approachable and did a wonderful job of making everyone feel at ease.  They also allowed us to have copy of their slide packet for reference, a real bonus. I have to say it was a fantastic opportunity to interact with the entire management team.

The organizers of this course also arranged for us to have dinner and meet/mingle with the founders of 10 Barrel Brewing.  Dinner was catered by 10 Barrel’s brewpub and we had free reign of the brewery.  We gained some very valuable insight along the way and got to ask lots of beer geek questions; it was great.  As with all of the people we met in Bend, the guys from 10 Barrel were consummate hosts and great to hang out with.

As for the location for the class, Bend was fantastic and inspirational.  The craft beer community in Bend is the stuff of legends.  Had some really great offerings from Boneyard Beer, Bend Brewing, Deschutes, Crux Fermentation, Worthy and the list goes on.  Didn’t get a chance to partake of any offerings from The Ale Apothecary, but they were epic from what I heard.  What was apparent is that even a town as small as Bend (~80,000) can support over 14 craft breweries/brewpubs.  In fact in my opinion, it is the “critical mass” of craft brewers in this area that has allowed it to become such a hotbed for great beer, and tourism.  We can only hope that we can be part of creating the same thing in NOLA.

Last but not least, there were a number of “one off” tidbits of knowledge that we picked up along the way.  These aren’t things that you necessarily think of at this point in the startup but are good to know.  So here’s my list in no particular order:

• Anticipate using 3 kegs a week for a local account and 6 kegs a week for an out of town account (when you start adding up all the kegs you need at $150 a keg shell you can see how this hammers your cash flow);


• You make more money on kegs then you do packaged beer. The only exception to this are 22oz bombers.  These give you your greatest profit.


• When you negotiate and agreement with your distributor, make sure there is a keg audit included.  This way your distributor has to compensate you for lost kegs.


• Those variety packs that everyone loves, yeah those get packed by hand.  Yikes that’s a lot of labor.


• Chinese made kegs with MicroMatic spears seem to work pretty well and cost less.


• If you decide to can your beer, just remember that empty cans take up a lot of room.


• You are never too small to follow good safety guidelines.


• Don’t forget to register your brewery with many of the online smart phone apps like “findmytap”.


• Startup with a good, and trusted, lawyer and accountant.


• Ideal ratio of accounts/distributor sales rep is 80:1 or less.


• In markets with limited shelf space you’re probably better off going with 22oz bombers versus 6-packs due to shelf space issues and profit margin.


• If you're going to do dock sales, use plastic kegs and add the price into the cost (note there was a recent fatality associated with filling plastic kegs so be sure you know what you buy since many believe that some plastic kegs are better than others).

Well enough with the business talk.  My session IPA is almost completely dry hopped and ready for carbonation.  I’m not displeased with what it tastes like to date but have already begun to reformulate the recipe for the next batch.  The Keezer is getting low so I’ll be brewing next week.  Due to popular demand, I’ll be brewing my American Pale Ale with a few minor adjustments.

In the meantime we are submitting RFPs for equipment and will meet with a design company to discuss our logo and brand later this week.  The Master Brewers Association of the Americas Annual Conference is in October and the program looks extremely interesting.  Hoping to address some scheduling conflicts and attend but if not there’s always the Craft Brewers Conference in April.

Cheers,

Mark

P.S.  Finally got to try Pliny the Elder...pretty darn tasty!

Less than 24 Hours to Go on the Business Plan

Hi Y'all,

It's been a busy few weeks... part of the course at Oregon State was a business plan competition. The winner of the competition gets to spend two weeks working as a paid intern at the Ninkasi Brewery. Now this is a true prize for someone who is interested in starting a production brewery.

We have to submit our plan by 11 a.m. tomorrow morning and to tell you the truth, I'm quite impressed with ours. We've run our numbers and it looks as though we'll be profitable at the end of year 2! Now that's something to cheers to... Hopefully our friends, fools and family will think the same and have interest in investing in our dream of running a production craft brewery.

We'll keep you posted on our success of lack there of. Other exciting news is we've filed our LLC paperwork and we're working on a logo with a graphic design firm in NOLA.

When our logo is done, we'll be sure to share - perhaps some of you might want to comment.

Cheers for now and happy Friday,

Karen

A Trip to Bend

Mark and I just completed a week at Oregon State’s brewery startup course in Bend, Oregon. It was by far the best professional education short course I have taken. I learned more than I ever imagined and I am even more excited about opening a brewery than before. The class has made us think about our strategy and now we’re contemplating refining it. My original dream was to open a 60 bbl production brewery; I did and do realize that would take a significant amount of capital and was / am prepared to raise that amount of money.

A few important lessons; we need a one, three and five year plan. Before the class, I was working on just the general plan. I also found out that draft sales are the most profitable but bottles and cans are the most accessible to drinkers. “Bombers” or the 22 oz bottle available at most retail stores are highly profitable and there is significant demand for them.

The Ninkasi Management Team spent a day and a half with us. They shared a lot; especially from an employee value proposition and on the importance to get out of the weeds and plan for expansion.

Bend was fantastic. I forgot how much I love that town; if you haven’t been and you like beer and doing outdoor activities, I highly recommend the trip. We rented a house almost downtown on Mirror Pond and walked to OSU’s campus every day. The weather was perfect and the drivers of cars were quite respectable of our pedestrianism. I also had the chance to connect with my dear friend Steve Edwards and chew the fat with him. The last time we saw him was when Mark and I made a whirlwind tour there in 2010. Lots has changed since then including a few new breweries.

If you are interested in specifics, shoot us a reply and we’ll share what we learned.

Cheers,

Karen

Sustainability and Responsibility

 

Greetings all!

Well just received our syllabus for the Craft Brewery Start-up Workshop in Bend, Ore. on September 9^th.   It was refreshing to see that along with many of the typical topics one would assume would be discussed (e.g. finance, operations, logistics) was  sustainability.  Given that there are, at last count, 2,483 microbreweries in the United States, sustainability is a clearly a topic that all current and future microbrewery owners need to address.

Many of the larger microbrewers have already taken steps towards sustainability and beyond.  New Belgium, for example, approaches sustainability from the perspective of core company values, environmental metrics, sourcing and community.  Similarly, Sierra Nevada has had a long commitment to supporting the cause of sustainability and has a very extensive webpage detailing the steps that they are taking to continually improve their processes, energy efficiency/generation and minimize waste.

All along we’ve been considering how we can make our brewery, even in the start-up phase, more consistent with the tenets of sustainability; it will be interesting to hear how others are tackling this problem as start-up microbreweries.

 

Switching from sustainability to responsibility, the New York Times today featured the results of a small study out of Johns Hopkins which found that five beer brands were prevalent among emergency room patients who had consumed beer within the 6 hours prior to their presentation to the emergency room (Budweiser, Steel Reserve, Colt 45, Bud Ice, and Bud Light).  Moreover, nearly 46% of beer consumed by emergency room patients in this study was accounted for by four malt liquors (Steel Reserve – 8.1% ABV, Colt 45 – 6% ABV, Bud Ice – 5.5% ABV and King Cobra – 6% ABV), despite the fact that these four accounted for less than 2 percent of the beer consumed among Americans.

While things like study size, study location, demographics, etc make it difficult to interpret the implications of this study, the authors did suggest these results suggest that there should be better labeling on malt liquor beverages and less marketing. They also recommend a higher tax on beverages with higher alcohol content to discourage people from drinking more potent brands.

With many craft beers in the 6.5 – 7.5% ABV range, changes such as those suggested by the researchers conducting the above study, could have a significant impact on craft beer producers.  Consequently, like sustainability, responsibility and education are major considerations in the development of our business plan.

With the old adage, “all work and no play” in mind, it’s time to start brewing again.  Our recent first tap gathering has depleted our stores of tasty homebrew, with our robust porter being the latest victim.

The last of our experimental IPA batches (with single aromatic hops) is about to come out of the fermentor and will be transferred to a keg for dry hopping later this week.  While we wait for it to mature we are beginning work on a “sessionable” IPA recipe.  Our first attempt will draw from the taste profiles of our single aromatic hop IPA’s to date; can’t wait to get back to brewing.

More to come.

First Tap

Was able to try a few of our new beers out on friends last night and it was a resounding success.  We used a standardized beer tasting questionnaire from Beerology in the hopes of gathering helpful feedback for the next batches.  There was some great comments and all positive reviews.  Next time we’ll do a blind comparison with a “gold standard” of that particular style as the comparator. 

Our two latest beers are an American pale ale and a Cascade IPA.  The latter is part of an IPA series we’re doing featuring a single aromatic hop.  Our thoughts are to appreciate the taste of these aromatic hops solo before putting them together for a more complex flavor profile.  

In the meantime, we are working away on our business plan and have begun to talk to banks about financing.  Last week we were able to obtain the particulars for the Pegas Craft Tap and Novotap growler filling system (http://pegasdistusa.com/pegas-novotap/).  We first became acquainted with this system when we were in Russia a few years ago.  It’s a great system that allows a growler (both glass and plastic) to be filled under an atmosphere of carbon dioxide in about a minute with minimal waste (the Pegas distributor website states growler loss is as high as 30-40%).  The benefits for the consumer is that the beer tastes better longer and with the use of polyethylene two liter bottles it can be transported to the beach, fish camp, or camping without worrying about dealing with a large glass growler.  For the craft brewer  the benefit is that the quality of the beer will be preserved and there is a minimal amount of product loss due to foam over, etc.  

There are still some issues obtaining the brown polyethylene bottles (necessary to prevent UV damage to the beer) in the US but we have some ideas for a work around to this issue that will also tie in with our marketing plan.   

[caption id="attachment_83" align="aligncenter" width="130"] Pegas Craftap[/caption]

In the meantime we continue to brew.  Today we brewed another of our IPA series.  This one features Ahtanum.  Ahtanum has a decidedly floral presence with some spice and a bit of pine thrown in for good measure.  It isn’t nearly as popular as Amarillo, Centennial or Cascade for dry hopping and its aromatic properties but from what we could tell from today’s batch, it’s a tasty little hop. 

More to come.

Oregon State's Short Course on Brewery Startups

For those of you who are interested in how to start a brewery, you should check out this:



https://pne.oregonstate.edu/catalog/craft-brewery-startup-workshop

Where Y'at?

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  We’re currently under the gun to get our business plan in order so we can present it at the Oregon State University’s short course on how to open a brewery.  We head to Bend, Oregon the week of September 9^th to get educated by the professionals from the Ninkasi Brewery.

So outside of the business plan you may wonder what we’ve been up to…  well let’s see…  we’ve fallen in love with session beer.  The winter weight gain has been pretty hard on me and I have to consider that outside of not exercising as much because it’s cold and dark, a contributing factor could be my love of IPAs!  So, I’m trying to wrangle the weight down before the snow hits the ground again.

Outside of drinking session beer, we’ve toured a few Alaskan breweries.  The folks at King Street and Midnight Sun Brewery gave us impromptu tours…  all we did was ask a few questions and the brewers were happy to show us their ‘kit’.  We also had a chance to stop in Denali Brewery.  We didn’t go to their production brewery but we did visit their brew pub.  Their business is on the rise.

I’ve begun to read the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control’s website trying to understand what it takes to open a brewery.  Hurdle number 1 – we have to have a location prior to applying for a permit so I guess that means I need to contact Stacy Head, Council Woman at Large in New Orleans to try and figure out what we need to look for in a location.  Now, here’s the million dollar question – do we lease or own the property?  I’m in agreement with Mark, we purchase the property and locate the brewery on our on ground!



More to come y’all!

The Love of the Centrifuge

Centrifuge is where it’s at! Who needs a bright tank when you have a centrifuge? Mark and I went to Midnight Sun’s tap room yesterday and we were lucky enough to get a quick tour of their brewery. They have discovered the centrifuge. It’s an expensive piece of kit but well worth the money.

More to come…

Karen

Brewery Business Plan Update

And I’m back. Hi y’all, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. This Alaskan summer is unbelievably beautiful. According to our neighbors it’s the best summer since the 1970s. All of this good weather makes it hard to focus on a business plan at the computer… but we do continue to brew tasty beer and hold first taps in our garage.

Yesterday I ran over to King Street Brewery to return a keg of their pilsner – which is the best I’ve had, I might add and spoke with one of their brewers and got a bit of market intelligence. Their brewery is 10 barrels and they have 20 and 40 barrel fermentation tanks and a 20 barrel bright tank and a 40 barrel bright tank. Such a great brewery I think an expansion will be in the works soon.

Back to the business plan, we’ve just about completed our executive summary and are now working on the financial section to include break even analysis. Based upon the numbers I’ve run we should breakeven in Production Year 2 at about 25,000 barrels. I’ll need to test this with multiple people to ensure I haven’t overlooked something. I’ve also been on the lookout for a decent piece of commercial property and have landed on paying $4.50 per square foot per year for lease space… now, I just need to understand what a ‘triple net lease’ means. Ah, more research…

Our goal is to have the business plan complete by the time we head to lovely Bend, Oregon for Oregon State’s “How to Start a Brewery” course in September. Once we get through that course, I hope to send the business plan to a couple of business schools and have some of their MBA students review and provide feedback. We shall see if we are going to make it a viable business before we start marketing our shares.

In the meantime, Mark’s beer is getting better and better and we’re getting close to our IPA recipe and I believe we’ve landed on a wheat – it may be the best I’ve tasted.

We’re headed to a tap room this afternoon for some more market intelligence and to enjoy some great craft beer. More to come y’all.

Cheers,

Karen

Creating a Business Plan

I’m glad to be home from The Netherlands.  Heineken is definitely king in The Netherlands and served everywhere in The Hague.  While I was there, I noticed the second most available beer was Palm which is brewed in Belgium and is a pale ale.  Hmmm….  Perhaps the Dutch can use an introduction to an North American style IPA.

We are plugging along on our business plan.  The beverage industry is quite larger than I thought and beer is a huge player in the market.  Louisiana ranks 11^th in beer consumption but 47^th in breweries per capita.  I think it’s time for a change.

 

While I was gone, we received a quote for our brewery from Allied Beverage Tanks, Inc.  While Mark and his nephew are brewing a batch of IPA, I’m in the office trying to understand the ins and outs of this very detailed quote.

 

More to come.

Cheer for now,

Karen

 

Fermenter Build

So while Karen is away I thought I'd add a "gear" post. In the past I've had issues with controlling fermentation temperatures using only ambient conditions.  It's also a bit of a pain to be lugging 6.5 gallon glass carboys filled with fermenting beer around the house trying to find a room that's 68F.  To remedy this situation I've acquired a used refrigerator, for free, via Craigslist.

The side-by-side arrangement is very amenable to being converted to a fermentation chamber. Until recently, I've been able to use it as a fermenter with any significant modification.  All the wiring for the electrics/thermistor were passed easily through the existing drain after enlarging it with a 1.5" drill bit.

With the arrival of our Braumeister 50L, our brewing capacity has increased substantially.  Naturally, the next bottle neck will be the fermentation process. So last weekend I finally set about the task of further modifying my used fridge as a fermenter.

After surveying the interior to determine whether or not any necessary parts were in the way, I let loose with the sawzall.  Once the partition wall was removed, the exposed sheet metal edges and insulation were covered with some aluminum duct tape.  The shelving, with a removable top shelve was built in place.

I'm using a dual-stage Johnson Controls temperature controller to keep the fermenter at the appropriate temperature.  For the heating component a 75 watt incandescent light bulb, from a inexpensive drop light placed in a paint, acts as my heat source.  To keep the air circulating, two USB computer fans attached to the legs to the shelve were used.



While using a thermowell immersed in the carboy will provide the best representation of the actual fermentation temperatures, I find that the stopper used for a thermowell set-up isn't always sufficient for an airlock/blow-off.  A majority of the time I use a 2-3L yeast starter and the fermentations tend to be quite vigorous; so much so that they generally require a 1" blow-off tube/bucket arrangement.  For lack of a better solution, I normally attach the thermistor to the side of the carboy encased in insulation.

So now that the fermenter is finished it's time to brew.  Unfortunately, the short malt stack adapter that allows you to brew 20L batches in the 50L Braumeister was on backorder from Morebeer.com.  While I was able to find one on another website (and at a savings of $75 including shipping), we have to decide whether or not the first batch on the Braumeister should be a big one or not.

There's still some time before the weekend to decide and besides I need to check out the availability of supplies at the local brew store before pulling the trigger.  In the meantime I'll start familiarizing myself with the Braumeister's controls and post some photos of the test run shortly.

In the meantime, please raise your glass, of homebrew or craft beer preferably, to the state of Alabama.  As of May 9th, it is now legal to homebrew in Alabama making it the 50th state to adopt such legislation.

Cheers,

Mark

Education is the Key to Success!

Mark and I have signed up to take a course at Oregon State University; the course is focused on brewery startups.  The class is being held in Bend (another huge benefit of taking the class)!

The person who arrives with the best business plan wins a two week paid internship at the Ninkasi  Brewing Company.  That’s all I need to hear, competition.  We’ve been plugging away on our business plan.  Thus far, we’ve completed the Executive Summary,  written a ton of information on the US beer market and now we’re working the financials.

 

There are some brewery friendly states out there and turns out, Louisiana is not so friendly.  I need to call the two Senators and complain.  While I’m ok with the three tier distribution, I want to be able to sell my kegs, growlers, cans and bottles retail out of our very own tap room.  I hear a rumor that change was in the works; however, I haven’t seen this in writing.  I was in Houston a few weeks ago and there are craft breweries popping up all over in the state.  One thing I love about Texas is how pro-business the state is…

 

I’m heading to The Netherlands tomorrow.  I think a tour of Heineken is in order…  Perhaps their beer is a bit more tasty and fresher when consumed on their property.

 

More to come,

Karen

Hopfoolery Hits Twitter

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https://twitter.com/hopfoolery

A Visit to Florida

We’re on vacation in Florida and took this opportunity to drink some beer that isn’t distributed in Alaska.  Today, I had Shipyard’s XXXX IPA.  The beer’s drink before date was before today…  I still thought it was tasty because, well it was.  I have fond memories of visiting Shipyard’s brewery in Maine when I was in graduate school in the early 1990s.  Shipyard was an early pioneer into the craft brewing scene.  Cheers to them.
Yesterday we paid a visit to Cigar City Brewing in Ybor City (Tampa).  We had had the Jai Alia IPA in cans before our visit to the brewery and the IPA was impressive… hoppy and fresh.  When we arrived at the brewery for our tour (you can book online) we had to wait about 15 minutes so I asked for a Jai Alia in a pint.  Mark decided to try the Tocobaga Red Ale.  Was he sorry he didn’t get the IPA for his first draw.  The Jai Alia right out of their keg was super fresh and even better out of their keg.

 

We took a tour of their startup brewery.  It’s a 15 barrel two vessel system…  all but one of the fermentors were empty.  In the one that was “cooking” they were making a horchata beer.  It’s a bit sweet for my liking but certainly inventive and tasty.

 

After the tour, we sat in their tap room and had a couple of more beers.  I struck up a conversation with an employee who was sitting next to me.  Our paths crossed over his broken IPhone glass.  I suggested he bypass the “genius bar” and fix the phone himself.  He told me about his past and coming to work at Cigar City.  His passion, like mine, is drinking good beer and he told me he found his “people” in so many words.

 

Mark joined the conversation and we were lucky enough to be shown the rest of the brewery.  If I remember correctly, Cigar City’s actual product brewery is a 30 barrel brewery that they have quickly outgrown so they are installing some additional (120 barrel ***I think) fermentors.  In fact, there demand has been so great that they only distribute in the state of Florida, Denmark and Sweden.  God bless the Scandinavians.  I like people who like good beerJ.

 

We learned a lot yesterday during the tour.  Again, the message was loud and clear.  If you start off small, you’ll soon be out of space and good, tasty, fresh beer.  Second, sanitation is key.  Third, bottling beer is a pain in the arse.

Cheers y’all and pick up some Cigar City when you have a chance.  They produce great beer and their staff is totally committed and very well informed.

 

Karen

Hello world!

Hello World!  We are Mark and Karen Logan currently living in Anchorage, Alaska.  The purpose of this blog is to capture our journey as we go from home brewers to the opening of a production craft brewery.

Follow our blog and learn about the twists and turns of opening a craft brewery as we work the following:  business plan, finding investors, understanding state and federal regulations, finding a location, buying brewery equipment, marketing and lastly going into production.

 

Our target opening date is May 2015.

 

Cheers,
Mark and Karen