What does it take to start a Brewery?

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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

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!

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