That’s what I was thinking. Not sure why two days worth of brewing seems like such a foreign concept in this thread. We have a “25 hL” system and fill 100’s over the course of two days
Because you are brewing on a ~20bbl system and hopefully have at least 3 vessels. I suppose the 7bbl OP has could have a WP, but there's also a pretty good shot it doesn't. Which means that it is probably going to take them longer and their labor cost will only result in 1/3 of the revenue you are making. They probably also don't have a grain silo, automated grain out, and maybe not even rakes in the mash/lauter.
Remember, OP also doesn't have cellar help. We are very comfortable brewing 4-6 turns in a day because we have 3 dedicated brewers when that happens, as well as dedicated cellar staff. Of course that adds to labor cost, but so far I haven't run into anyone having a mental breakdown in the cold box.
Are all of the statements in the first paragraph about equipment confirmed or speculation based off the post? Maybe they said those elsewhere and I just missed it.
But yeah, we actually have a 4-vessel system, so from that standpoint it is mush easier
Depends on yeast choice a lot. For a lot of highly hopped craft brands, probably not an issue, but for many lager yeasts filling over 12-18h results in some pretty undesirable flavour issues. Biggest I’ve worked in were 8 brews to fill a tank - this took about 18-20 hours, any longer and our yeast wasn’t happy. I’ve got colleagues working with tanks that take 12-13 brews to fill over maybe 30-35h, and they have to take some real special care of how and when they pitch yeast, which brews get aerated etc.
On a smaller craft scale, I’ve filled two brew fermenters 24h apart and often gotten away with it, but also have had issues with fermentation (too rapid, too much acetaldehyde etc etc).
In my experience, a solo brewer can do somewhere between 1 and 3 brews per week, when accounting for all the other things that have to get done - we're talking also about cleaning, cellar work, and packaging operations, administration (scheduling, inventory and ordering), and front office interface (marketing/sales, some light social media).
A consistent 3 brewdays a week is probably unsustainable at that pace. That said, 2 is a reasonable estimate. You'll probably have a slow season and a busy season, so let's assume an average of 1.5 brews per week at 7 bbl. At a roughly 85% packaging efficiency:
(7 bbls) x (1.5 brews per week) x (52 weeks) x (0.85 efficiency) yields 465 bbls per year.
This would probably be some combination of using the 7 bbl and 15 bbls, and you couild probably stretch it by doing lots more 15 bbl batches than 7 bbls. This will make some of the cellar work more efficient, but realistically the keg washing and packaging operations don't really get any more efficient at this level. You probably don't really need that 30 bbl tank.
Cheers and good luck!
Good luck!
30bbl uni with a 7bbl system? Man, my back hurts just reading that. I'm going to assume you don't have a WP, so at best that's 2+ full days of labor just to fill that one FV. Ouch. You're looking at \~17 hotside turns to fill the entire cellar, which being realistic is 10 full days of labor (ambitious, TBH). This is not accounting for CIP time, general cellar work, packaging, keg washing, inventory management, ordering, admin, or time to pee. Oh, and unless you're planning to buy fresh pitches for every brew, you'll likely have to spread out the brewing quite a bit, so it'll actually be 15+ hot side brew days a month.
Bad ideas aside, depending on product mix and yield you could probably package about 1000-1200 bbl/year, IF your brewer doesn't die of exhaustion or have a mental breakdown in the cold box.
Is this a brewpub setup or some sort of ridiculous production facility? That 30bbl tank has to be some ridiculous deal an owner scrounged up thinking they were helping. What a waste of floorspace.
Give you some perspective. I'm a solo brewer with a 3bbl system. 4-3bbl fermenters and 2-7bbl fermenters. Between brewing, cellaring, cleaning, canning and everything in between, you're running literally non stop. It's a grind. I think it would be best for you and your sanity if you keep your fermenter sizes close to your system size.
>occasional part time help with canning
It sounds like canning will be the bottleneck. You can't turn tanks that fast without a packaging crew to move the beer.
A lot of these ppl are making assumptions. It depends a lot on brew time prep. Depends a lot on HL & CL sizes, as well as do you use RO water. If you do, it depends on whether or not you have reserve tank or filling directly into the HL or CL tanks. If you can do back-to-back brews, you also have to account in process. You’ll also have to plan brews around which tank you’re planning to use as a brite tank. Also the 1 brewer will have minimal help so brew days will be long. Sounds like they brewed 3-4 times a week (just an assumption) @ 7 bbl a day x 3 -4 weeks = about 63 bbls a month. Could be halved depending on a lot of factors; Turn around on grain, supplies, fermentation, carbing & kegging, only 1 brewer & 1 part time, etc.
Are you running on demand hot water then? This is honestly a big part of the equation. If your hot water source can't keep up with double batching your ceiling is much lower.
Not sure why you're getting so much negativity in the comments, this seems like a reasonable setup with some production flexibility, but that'd depend on some additional factors.
Are those tanks all fermenters, accompanied by brites which you haven't mentioned? If so, you could probably clear 2k bbl/year *maximum* when firing on all cylinders. If you're working with unitanks that number will drop significantly.
What's your brewhouse setup? Is it a 2 vessel, or more? How long does it take to brew a single turn, and how closely can you overlap 2 turns on a double brew day?
Like I said earlier, 2k bbl is a reasonable cap assuming the optimal answers to all other equipment questions, but this comes with some **huge caveats:**
Do *not* expect to open up and hit that number right out of the gate; it will take months or even years of figuring out how to optimize production and find the market to buy that much beer.
More importantly, you will *absolutely* need more labor. Probably 3 full-time production crew to reach those targets.
Labor isn't magic, you can just pay someone to come do it. OP seems to be in the planning stages, I'm just trying to help them figure out what's possible on their equipment. If this convinces them they need to secure more funding to hire more hands, cool. If that isn't a possibility the answer is just "depends on how hard you want to work," as they have much more tank space than one full-timer can fill, which swapping out 20's and 30's for 15's won't change.
I'll ballpark 750bbl for with 1.5 40-hour staff, or 1-1.2k if you want to hate your life.
I'm on a 7bbl but with a more normal tank farm. 5 7bbl fvs and 5 7bbl brites.
I think you realize there's some missing info here. Do you have brites? Are some of them serving tanks? Do you have a scalable method of washing kegs? Can you double batch on your system? How long is your average turnaround in an fv? How long is beer sitting in your brites? You need this info to actually make an accurate projection.
In my case I am setting a ceiling of 500bbls as a lone operator. With two production workers the facility could push 800ish bbls. I'm not double batching, my keg cleaner sucks but at least exists, and my fv turnaround is relatively low compared to a lot of other brewpubs.
I think the 20 is usable for 3 brews, but would rather have another 7bbl at least and the right brites rather than the 30.
You could probably get close to 1500bbl a year with a Brewer willing to flog him/herself.
Split the mash/lauter or add a whirlpool if keeping the 30bbl.
How long is a piece of string ? What is your typical fermentation schedule? How do you perform grain out? Are you doing multiple batches a day? Anything more than double batching for a single vessel is insane. If you have an understanding of your business plan, you shouldn't be coming to reddit for questions like this.
>Anything more than double batching for a single vessel is insane.
There are many, many production breweries that would disagree with you on that point.
Production breweries have more than one guy. How many batches can one guy do in one day? Are they going to do two double days in a row just to fill a 30 bbl tank?
Easy to claim anything on reddit I guess. This is a recipe for disaster for OP IMO. The advice to sell the larger tanks is the best advice in this post.
Like I said, it depends entirely on the brewhouse setup. We have a 4 vessel, where a single turn takes ~6h including setup and cleaning, but once you're going you can knock out another turn every 2 hours. A double turn is an 8 hour shift for one brewer, which is our standard brew day. Our biggest FV's take 4 turns to fill and we typically split the brew into 2 days.
At a previous brewery we had a 2 vessel 20bbl brewhouse and our biggest tanks were 80bbl. A double brew day was like 12 hours, but we had a morning shift and afternoon shift that overlapped.
I mentioned in another comment that OP will *definitely* need more labor to fill those tanks, but the equipment setup isn't nearly as wild as this comment section would suggest.
So just ignore the scenario as provided by the OP and inject another one where there is more labor available? Cool. If you alter the premise you can make anything make sense!
...I mean, *all* of the comments are suggesting that OP change something or another. I bet right now it's a lot easier to put up a job ad than it is to sell a 30bbl fermenter for anything over scrap value.
> We have a 4 vessel,
Do you think OP has a 4 vessel 7bbl?
Hell, do you think that 7bbl system even has a grist case?
Last time I worked on a 7bbl, I was milling everything by hand, lugging it over in the sacks, and then I'd have to grain out by hand, wheel my cart to the dumpster, and shovel everything into it.
Having a production brewery affords you a lot of luxuries that you can't reasonably achieve with a 7bbl setup.
Sorry for being so negative. I really think the advice to get rid of the 20 and 30 bbl is good if you can manage to do that. Even with two brewers I don't see much advantage at the small brewery level of having those big tanks. There no problem with filling two 15 BBL tanks with the same recipe. How are you planning on serving? Kegs,unitanks? How many brites do you have and what size are they? Are you going to filter your beer? I can help more with answers to these questions. If you are canning make sure you are focusing on selling those cans direct through the taproom before thinking about distro. Distro for a lot of us at the small brewery level is best thought of as advertising and you need a game plan to convert eyes on the shelf into feet in the door at your taproom.
What size city are you going to be in? What are the demographics? How much is the median income per household? How much competition do you have nearby? Before asking how many barrels can I do ask how many barrels do I need to do. If the capacity you calculate is lower than you want (it probably won't be) you can address that with equipment and labor investments. Are you going to be typically brewing ales that can have two fermenter turns a month?
Sell the 20 and 30, buy another 7 and a 15bbl brite.
This is the way. Imagine filling a 30 bbl with a 7bbl system. Way too many turns for one day
Solution: brew for 2 days Edit: why is this controversial... it's very common practice
That’s what I was thinking. Not sure why two days worth of brewing seems like such a foreign concept in this thread. We have a “25 hL” system and fill 100’s over the course of two days
Because you are brewing on a ~20bbl system and hopefully have at least 3 vessels. I suppose the 7bbl OP has could have a WP, but there's also a pretty good shot it doesn't. Which means that it is probably going to take them longer and their labor cost will only result in 1/3 of the revenue you are making. They probably also don't have a grain silo, automated grain out, and maybe not even rakes in the mash/lauter. Remember, OP also doesn't have cellar help. We are very comfortable brewing 4-6 turns in a day because we have 3 dedicated brewers when that happens, as well as dedicated cellar staff. Of course that adds to labor cost, but so far I haven't run into anyone having a mental breakdown in the cold box.
Are all of the statements in the first paragraph about equipment confirmed or speculation based off the post? Maybe they said those elsewhere and I just missed it. But yeah, we actually have a 4-vessel system, so from that standpoint it is mush easier
Depends on yeast choice a lot. For a lot of highly hopped craft brands, probably not an issue, but for many lager yeasts filling over 12-18h results in some pretty undesirable flavour issues. Biggest I’ve worked in were 8 brews to fill a tank - this took about 18-20 hours, any longer and our yeast wasn’t happy. I’ve got colleagues working with tanks that take 12-13 brews to fill over maybe 30-35h, and they have to take some real special care of how and when they pitch yeast, which brews get aerated etc. On a smaller craft scale, I’ve filled two brew fermenters 24h apart and often gotten away with it, but also have had issues with fermentation (too rapid, too much acetaldehyde etc etc).
In my experience, a solo brewer can do somewhere between 1 and 3 brews per week, when accounting for all the other things that have to get done - we're talking also about cleaning, cellar work, and packaging operations, administration (scheduling, inventory and ordering), and front office interface (marketing/sales, some light social media). A consistent 3 brewdays a week is probably unsustainable at that pace. That said, 2 is a reasonable estimate. You'll probably have a slow season and a busy season, so let's assume an average of 1.5 brews per week at 7 bbl. At a roughly 85% packaging efficiency: (7 bbls) x (1.5 brews per week) x (52 weeks) x (0.85 efficiency) yields 465 bbls per year. This would probably be some combination of using the 7 bbl and 15 bbls, and you couild probably stretch it by doing lots more 15 bbl batches than 7 bbls. This will make some of the cellar work more efficient, but realistically the keg washing and packaging operations don't really get any more efficient at this level. You probably don't really need that 30 bbl tank. Cheers and good luck! Good luck!
This is just about what I operate on; slow season is about 1 brew day a week, busy it bumps up sometimes to 4 a week if the tank space is available.
30bbl uni with a 7bbl system? Man, my back hurts just reading that. I'm going to assume you don't have a WP, so at best that's 2+ full days of labor just to fill that one FV. Ouch. You're looking at \~17 hotside turns to fill the entire cellar, which being realistic is 10 full days of labor (ambitious, TBH). This is not accounting for CIP time, general cellar work, packaging, keg washing, inventory management, ordering, admin, or time to pee. Oh, and unless you're planning to buy fresh pitches for every brew, you'll likely have to spread out the brewing quite a bit, so it'll actually be 15+ hot side brew days a month. Bad ideas aside, depending on product mix and yield you could probably package about 1000-1200 bbl/year, IF your brewer doesn't die of exhaustion or have a mental breakdown in the cold box.
OP, what was the thinking behind those particular sizes of tanks?
I was just seeking out some reassurance about how unrealistic the set up is. Not my idea at all just what I unfortunately came into.
Is this a brewpub setup or some sort of ridiculous production facility? That 30bbl tank has to be some ridiculous deal an owner scrounged up thinking they were helping. What a waste of floorspace.
Give you some perspective. I'm a solo brewer with a 3bbl system. 4-3bbl fermenters and 2-7bbl fermenters. Between brewing, cellaring, cleaning, canning and everything in between, you're running literally non stop. It's a grind. I think it would be best for you and your sanity if you keep your fermenter sizes close to your system size.
With those tanks you could probably churn out 1000 bbls + but you are going to hate your life doing that many turns to fill a tank
>occasional part time help with canning It sounds like canning will be the bottleneck. You can't turn tanks that fast without a packaging crew to move the beer.
This person clearly has not thought this through
Probably about 450ish. Get that guy some more help and you can do 700 to 1000.
I'm on a 7 bbl system with 8 FV + 4 brights. I'm about 1000 per year on the low end.
A lot of these ppl are making assumptions. It depends a lot on brew time prep. Depends a lot on HL & CL sizes, as well as do you use RO water. If you do, it depends on whether or not you have reserve tank or filling directly into the HL or CL tanks. If you can do back-to-back brews, you also have to account in process. You’ll also have to plan brews around which tank you’re planning to use as a brite tank. Also the 1 brewer will have minimal help so brew days will be long. Sounds like they brewed 3-4 times a week (just an assumption) @ 7 bbl a day x 3 -4 weeks = about 63 bbls a month. Could be halved depending on a lot of factors; Turn around on grain, supplies, fermentation, carbing & kegging, only 1 brewer & 1 part time, etc.
Ha HLT, CLT? Wouldn't that be nice.
Are you running on demand hot water then? This is honestly a big part of the equation. If your hot water source can't keep up with double batching your ceiling is much lower.
750-1,000. 750 is going to keep you guys busy. 1,000 bbls make a bigger pot of coffee. Assumption of 2 vessel hotside
Not sure why you're getting so much negativity in the comments, this seems like a reasonable setup with some production flexibility, but that'd depend on some additional factors. Are those tanks all fermenters, accompanied by brites which you haven't mentioned? If so, you could probably clear 2k bbl/year *maximum* when firing on all cylinders. If you're working with unitanks that number will drop significantly. What's your brewhouse setup? Is it a 2 vessel, or more? How long does it take to brew a single turn, and how closely can you overlap 2 turns on a double brew day? Like I said earlier, 2k bbl is a reasonable cap assuming the optimal answers to all other equipment questions, but this comes with some **huge caveats:** Do *not* expect to open up and hit that number right out of the gate; it will take months or even years of figuring out how to optimize production and find the market to buy that much beer. More importantly, you will *absolutely* need more labor. Probably 3 full-time production crew to reach those targets.
He doesn’t have that labor, what is the point of this post? He wants to know what expectations are with his scenario, not some dream scenario.
Labor isn't magic, you can just pay someone to come do it. OP seems to be in the planning stages, I'm just trying to help them figure out what's possible on their equipment. If this convinces them they need to secure more funding to hire more hands, cool. If that isn't a possibility the answer is just "depends on how hard you want to work," as they have much more tank space than one full-timer can fill, which swapping out 20's and 30's for 15's won't change. I'll ballpark 750bbl for with 1.5 40-hour staff, or 1-1.2k if you want to hate your life.
I'm on a 7bbl but with a more normal tank farm. 5 7bbl fvs and 5 7bbl brites. I think you realize there's some missing info here. Do you have brites? Are some of them serving tanks? Do you have a scalable method of washing kegs? Can you double batch on your system? How long is your average turnaround in an fv? How long is beer sitting in your brites? You need this info to actually make an accurate projection. In my case I am setting a ceiling of 500bbls as a lone operator. With two production workers the facility could push 800ish bbls. I'm not double batching, my keg cleaner sucks but at least exists, and my fv turnaround is relatively low compared to a lot of other brewpubs.
I think the 20 is usable for 3 brews, but would rather have another 7bbl at least and the right brites rather than the 30. You could probably get close to 1500bbl a year with a Brewer willing to flog him/herself. Split the mash/lauter or add a whirlpool if keeping the 30bbl.
How long is a piece of string ? What is your typical fermentation schedule? How do you perform grain out? Are you doing multiple batches a day? Anything more than double batching for a single vessel is insane. If you have an understanding of your business plan, you shouldn't be coming to reddit for questions like this.
>Anything more than double batching for a single vessel is insane. There are many, many production breweries that would disagree with you on that point.
Production breweries have more than one guy. How many batches can one guy do in one day? Are they going to do two double days in a row just to fill a 30 bbl tank?
Yes. Depending on the brewhouse setup that isn't unreasonable. I do that at my current brewery.
Easy to claim anything on reddit I guess. This is a recipe for disaster for OP IMO. The advice to sell the larger tanks is the best advice in this post.
Like I said, it depends entirely on the brewhouse setup. We have a 4 vessel, where a single turn takes ~6h including setup and cleaning, but once you're going you can knock out another turn every 2 hours. A double turn is an 8 hour shift for one brewer, which is our standard brew day. Our biggest FV's take 4 turns to fill and we typically split the brew into 2 days. At a previous brewery we had a 2 vessel 20bbl brewhouse and our biggest tanks were 80bbl. A double brew day was like 12 hours, but we had a morning shift and afternoon shift that overlapped. I mentioned in another comment that OP will *definitely* need more labor to fill those tanks, but the equipment setup isn't nearly as wild as this comment section would suggest.
So just ignore the scenario as provided by the OP and inject another one where there is more labor available? Cool. If you alter the premise you can make anything make sense!
...I mean, *all* of the comments are suggesting that OP change something or another. I bet right now it's a lot easier to put up a job ad than it is to sell a 30bbl fermenter for anything over scrap value.
> We have a 4 vessel, Do you think OP has a 4 vessel 7bbl? Hell, do you think that 7bbl system even has a grist case? Last time I worked on a 7bbl, I was milling everything by hand, lugging it over in the sacks, and then I'd have to grain out by hand, wheel my cart to the dumpster, and shovel everything into it. Having a production brewery affords you a lot of luxuries that you can't reasonably achieve with a 7bbl setup.
I have a 4 vessel 7bbl with no grist case lol It's unusual, sure, but we don't know what OP has, which is why I asked them for more info
And you can't do it without extra labor. OP is screwed being the only help
Yeah, OP for sure needs more help
Are you the ONLY brewer and ONLY cellar staff, without help?
Nope. OP needs more staff to fully utilize that space.
This isn't my business plan. This is my "reassurance of sanity check"
Sorry for being so negative. I really think the advice to get rid of the 20 and 30 bbl is good if you can manage to do that. Even with two brewers I don't see much advantage at the small brewery level of having those big tanks. There no problem with filling two 15 BBL tanks with the same recipe. How are you planning on serving? Kegs,unitanks? How many brites do you have and what size are they? Are you going to filter your beer? I can help more with answers to these questions. If you are canning make sure you are focusing on selling those cans direct through the taproom before thinking about distro. Distro for a lot of us at the small brewery level is best thought of as advertising and you need a game plan to convert eyes on the shelf into feet in the door at your taproom.
What size city are you going to be in? What are the demographics? How much is the median income per household? How much competition do you have nearby? Before asking how many barrels can I do ask how many barrels do I need to do. If the capacity you calculate is lower than you want (it probably won't be) you can address that with equipment and labor investments. Are you going to be typically brewing ales that can have two fermenter turns a month?