Potentially Hiring a Brewer

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HopStocker

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Howdy!

I wanted to kick the tires with the thought of potentially opening up a brewery, and hiring someone who is established in the realm of brewing small batch brews. I have a general idea pertaining to the type of company I'd ideally like to create, and have a solid chunk of capital I would be able to put forth toward making the thing work.

I have brewed before, and understand the nature of how to brew, but it would be ideal to find someone who is passionate/knowledgeable about brewing, and is looking to be paid to do so. I personally am a huge beer fan/connisuer, and enjoy nothing more than drinking great beer alongside great food. I'm very intrigued by the business aspect the whole deal, and creating a brand that could sell to a niche market that is being under-served.

With all of this being said, do any of you know of a place where I could speak with prospective brewers, and spitball ideas back and forth with them?

Thanks in advance!
 
probrewer.com - Best of Luck! I would highly recommend working at a brewery before opening one. Just my two cents.
Thanks!

I would be sure to put together a staff that is more than qualified to run a brewery if I were to actually dive into this idea. Great advice, nonetheless!
 
Set up a crowd funding page and promise people bottles of your beer for a membership fee. You can go as high as 50 dollars a bottle, deliver it some 3 years later with little to no communication, and then end the club after delivering the bare minimum. Worked for @JWakefield
 
Not quite, but I do have the confidence and drive to make something work, though! Worth more than money in my opinion.

Do you have any experience in this field? Do you have any experience in starting a business? How much free cash flow do you have? How much collateral do you have? A bank will only give you 80% value on any collateral you have to borrow against. If you don't have the collateral banks won't even talk to you because breweries are lumped in with bars as a high risk investment. So small banks won't even be able to get the government to sign off on a loan, and big banks won't talk to you unless you are borrowing $1 million +.

If you don't have the money than you will have to think about taking on investors. How much of the business do they get and for what cost? Just remember the more partners you take on the more diluted your shares become the longer it will take to make any money. Starting a brewery is crazy expensive even if you bootstrap it. ESPECIALLY if you are hiring out as much as you are already thinking about.

The market for used equipment is drying up like crazy because everyone who has done a Mr. Beer kit once wants to open a brewery now. It's even HARDER to find nano scale stuff used. You can buy chinese **** for cheap but it might be 202 instead of 304 stainless, which I've seen happen. Quality new equipment is a 8-12 month lead time. One of my homies who bought a kit from a MAJOR player was pushed back 8 months PAST what was promised. There are a lot of new players in the small scale, but most of that equipment is all manually operated and basically oversized homebrew equipment. So expect each turn of your brewery to take longer, which on a small scale can be killer.

THEN, you need to know the ins and outs of your local, state, and federal alcohol laws. OR you going to be paying a lawyer $100 an hour to tell you what you need. In my hometown for example, there are only a certain number of liquor/beer licenses allowed to be give out. So if all of them are gone you are ****ed. So you have to wait for someone to go out of business and hope they let their license run out. BECAUSE they could hold on to it and make you pay them to transfer the license to you. You also need to know all the building and zoning codes. Probably going to spend ass tons of time with the planning committee of your town.

Make sure you understand that you have to have a building rented/bought and equipment at least ordered before you can even get on a list to get inspected. SO hopefully you can negotiate some free rent from your landlord.

These are barely even the basics of getting a place set up. Now you have to know if your place will even make money. How big is the town you live in? What is the market like? What is your competition? How are you going to stand out from everyone else? The days of making money off basic beers are over unless you are the only one in the market. But even small towns have 1-3 breweries now.

Judging by your, "I don't have a million dollars" I assume you are wanting to do a 1-5bbl set up. You need to figure out what kind of profit margins you can make off that. If you have heavy investment, have employees, and are trying to make any money at all you will need to do most all of your sales out of a tap room. Can your town even support the volume of beer you need to push through a tap room to break even?

Most distros won't talk to you with a less than 7bbl kit. Some big boys want 15bbl kits. Then, distro don't pay you **** per keg. Do you have any experience selling beer? Ever been in the industry at all? You are going to need to know the ins and out of selling. What distro will you go with? How many accounts do they have? What is their sell through time? How is the product kept? A pale ale that sits in a non temperature controlled warehouse for 10 weeks is going to be **** no matter what the original beer taste like. So a bar will put that on, it won't sell through and they'll never buy your stuff again. Unless they have the local schick, there are too many good choices now. Bars have almost a paralysis of choice now. Why as a bar would I pick your product when even Three Floyds will probably be cheaper and it sells itself?

Sorry to be a debbie downer but you need to know all this before you can even figure out if your brewery will break even. And you will lose money. A lot of it starting up. Especially considering it sounds like you want to be pretty conventional.

Now, there are ways to make bootstrapped and small scale work. But you better be the dopest in your area at what ever niche you have. I mean constantly kicking out treehouse level hoppy beers or killer sour beers or something you can make money on. Because on a small scale you will never make money on pales, wits, hefe, porter, ect.

With no industry experience it's going to be a long road fam. I've started and helped start a few craft bars and those were hard. Breweries are 10x harder.

Love,
666
 
Do you have any experience in this field? Do you have any experience in starting a business? How much free cash flow do you have? How much collateral do you have? A bank will only give you 80% value on any collateral you have to borrow against. If you don't have the collateral banks won't even talk to you because breweries are lumped in with bars as a high risk investment. So small banks won't even be able to get the government to sign off on a loan, and big banks won't talk to you unless you are borrowing $1 million +.

If you don't have the money than you will have to think about taking on investors. How much of the business do they get and for what cost? Just remember the more partners you take on the more diluted your shares become the longer it will take to make any money. Starting a brewery is crazy expensive even if you bootstrap it. ESPECIALLY if you are hiring out as much as you are already thinking about.

The market for used equipment is drying up like crazy because everyone who has done a Mr. Beer kit once wants to open a brewery now. It's even HARDER to find nano scale stuff used. You can buy chinese **** for cheap but it might be 202 instead of 304 stainless, which I've seen happen. Quality new equipment is a 8-12 month lead time. One of my homies who bought a kit from a MAJOR player was pushed back 8 months PAST what was promised. There are a lot of new players in the small scale, but most of that equipment is all manually operated and basically oversized homebrew equipment. So expect each turn of your brewery to take longer, which on a small scale can be killer.

THEN, you need to know the ins and outs of your local, state, and federal alcohol laws. OR you going to be paying a lawyer $100 an hour to tell you what you need. In my hometown for example, there are only a certain number of liquor/beer licenses allowed to be give out. So if all of them are gone you are ****ed. So you have to wait for someone to go out of business and hope they let their license run out. BECAUSE they could hold on to it and make you pay them to transfer the license to you. You also need to know all the building and zoning codes. Probably going to spend ass tons of time with the planning committee of your town.

Make sure you understand that you have to have a building rented/bought and equipment at least ordered before you can even get on a list to get inspected. SO hopefully you can negotiate some free rent from your landlord.

These are barely even the basics of getting a place set up. Now you have to know if your place will even make money. How big is the town you live in? What is the market like? What is your competition? How are you going to stand out from everyone else? The days of making money off basic beers are over unless you are the only one in the market. But even small towns have 1-3 breweries now.

Judging by your, "I don't have a million dollars" I assume you are wanting to do a 1-5bbl set up. You need to figure out what kind of profit margins you can make off that. If you have heavy investment, have employees, and are trying to make any money at all you will need to do most all of your sales out of a tap room. Can your town even support the volume of beer you need to push through a tap room to break even?

Most distros won't talk to you with a less than 7bbl kit. Some big boys want 15bbl kits. Then, distro don't pay you **** per keg. Do you have any experience selling beer? Ever been in the industry at all? You are going to need to know the ins and out of selling. What distro will you go with? How many accounts do they have? What is their sell through time? How is the product kept? A pale ale that sits in a non temperature controlled warehouse for 10 weeks is going to be **** no matter what the original beer taste like. So a bar will put that on, it won't sell through and they'll never buy your stuff again. Unless they have the local schick, there are too many good choices now. Bars have almost a paralysis of choice now. Why as a bar would I pick your product when even Three Floyds will probably be cheaper and it sells itself?

Sorry to be a debbie downer but you need to know all this before you can even figure out if your brewery will break even. And you will lose money. A lot of it starting up. Especially considering it sounds like you want to be pretty conventional.

Now, there are ways to make bootstrapped and small scale work. But you better be the dopest in your area at what ever niche you have. I mean constantly kicking out treehouse level hoppy beers or killer sour beers or something you can make money on. Because on a small scale you will never make money on pales, wits, hefe, porter, ect.

With no industry experience it's going to be a long road fam. I've started and helped start a few craft bars and those were hard. Breweries are 10x harder.

Love,
666
giphy.gif
 
There's a really cool, albeit controversial (depending on what other breweries you ask) new thing gaining traction here in San Diego. The property management company, H.G. Fenton, that started this has two locations and I believe will have a third soon.

Basically instead of raising (as much) capital, buying equipment, etc, you sign a 3 year lease and all you're responsible for is pimping out a tasting room and a bar. Obviously you're buying your own raw materials, getting company licensing, yadda yadda.

There are 5 breweries across 2 locations in San Diego up and running now. A few of the breweries are brand new, and a couple of them were existing before and this helped breathe new life into them. I can definitely see this catching on in other markets...but its very early. I would bet at least 2 of the existing tenants will expand into their own facility before, or right around the end of their lease.

http://www.hgfenton.com/breweryigniter/

Currently Amplified Aleworks where Sebowski slangs Electrocution IPA, and Pure Project where people line up for hazy cans



Currently San Diego Brewing Company's second location, Pariah, and Eppig brewing where they're already doing some of San Diego's best lagers right out of the gate.
breweryigniter_01.jpg




Good luck man!


Go Pats :D
 
There's a really cool, albeit controversial (depending on what other breweries you ask) new thing gaining traction here in San Diego. The property management company, H.G. Fenton, that started this has two locations and I believe will have a third soon.

Basically instead of raising (as much) capital, buying equipment, etc, you sign a 3 year lease and all you're responsible for is pimping out a tasting room and a bar. Obviously you're buying your own raw materials, getting company licensing, yadda yadda.

There are 5 breweries across 2 locations in San Diego up and running now. A few of the breweries are brand new, and a couple of them were existing before and this helped breathe new life into them. I can definitely see this catching on in other markets...but its very early. I would bet at least 2 of the existing tenants will expand into their own facility before, or right around the end of their lease.

http://www.hgfenton.com/breweryigniter/

Currently Amplified Aleworks where Sebowski slangs Electrocution IPA, and Pure Project where people line up for hazy cans

Currently San Diego Brewing Company's second location, Pariah, and Eppig brewing where they're already doing some of San Diego's best lagers right out of the gate.


breweryigniter_01.jpg




Good luck man!


Go Pats :D


someone started a similar business model in downtown Houston and it immediately failed.

:-/
 
Do you have any experience in this field? Do you have any experience in starting a business? How much free cash flow do you have? How much collateral do you have? A bank will only give you 80% value on any collateral you have to borrow against. If you don't have the collateral banks won't even talk to you because breweries are lumped in with bars as a high risk investment. So small banks won't even be able to get the government to sign off on a loan, and big banks won't talk to you unless you are borrowing $1 million +.

If you don't have the money than you will have to think about taking on investors. How much of the business do they get and for what cost? Just remember the more partners you take on the more diluted your shares become the longer it will take to make any money. Starting a brewery is crazy expensive even if you bootstrap it. ESPECIALLY if you are hiring out as much as you are already thinking about.

The market for used equipment is drying up like crazy because everyone who has done a Mr. Beer kit once wants to open a brewery now. It's even HARDER to find nano scale stuff used. You can buy chinese **** for cheap but it might be 202 instead of 304 stainless, which I've seen happen. Quality new equipment is a 8-12 month lead time. One of my homies who bought a kit from a MAJOR player was pushed back 8 months PAST what was promised. There are a lot of new players in the small scale, but most of that equipment is all manually operated and basically oversized homebrew equipment. So expect each turn of your brewery to take longer, which on a small scale can be killer.

THEN, you need to know the ins and outs of your local, state, and federal alcohol laws. OR you going to be paying a lawyer $100 an hour to tell you what you need. In my hometown for example, there are only a certain number of liquor/beer licenses allowed to be give out. So if all of them are gone you are ****ed. So you have to wait for someone to go out of business and hope they let their license run out. BECAUSE they could hold on to it and make you pay them to transfer the license to you. You also need to know all the building and zoning codes. Probably going to spend ass tons of time with the planning committee of your town.

Make sure you understand that you have to have a building rented/bought and equipment at least ordered before you can even get on a list to get inspected. SO hopefully you can negotiate some free rent from your landlord.

These are barely even the basics of getting a place set up. Now you have to know if your place will even make money. How big is the town you live in? What is the market like? What is your competition? How are you going to stand out from everyone else? The days of making money off basic beers are over unless you are the only one in the market. But even small towns have 1-3 breweries now.

Judging by your, "I don't have a million dollars" I assume you are wanting to do a 1-5bbl set up. You need to figure out what kind of profit margins you can make off that. If you have heavy investment, have employees, and are trying to make any money at all you will need to do most all of your sales out of a tap room. Can your town even support the volume of beer you need to push through a tap room to break even?

Most distros won't talk to you with a less than 7bbl kit. Some big boys want 15bbl kits. Then, distro don't pay you **** per keg. Do you have any experience selling beer? Ever been in the industry at all? You are going to need to know the ins and out of selling. What distro will you go with? How many accounts do they have? What is their sell through time? How is the product kept? A pale ale that sits in a non temperature controlled warehouse for 10 weeks is going to be **** no matter what the original beer taste like. So a bar will put that on, it won't sell through and they'll never buy your stuff again. Unless they have the local schick, there are too many good choices now. Bars have almost a paralysis of choice now. Why as a bar would I pick your product when even Three Floyds will probably be cheaper and it sells itself?

Sorry to be a debbie downer but you need to know all this before you can even figure out if your brewery will break even. And you will lose money. A lot of it starting up. Especially considering it sounds like you want to be pretty conventional.

Now, there are ways to make bootstrapped and small scale work. But you better be the dopest in your area at what ever niche you have. I mean constantly kicking out treehouse level hoppy beers or killer sour beers or something you can make money on. Because on a small scale you will never make money on pales, wits, hefe, porter, ect.

With no industry experience it's going to be a long road fam. I've started and helped start a few craft bars and those were hard. Breweries are 10x harder.

Love,
666


rPNCqww.jpg
 
Do you have any experience in this field? Do you have any experience in starting a business? How much free cash flow do you have? How much collateral do you have? A bank will only give you 80% value on any collateral you have to borrow against. If you don't have the collateral banks won't even talk to you because breweries are lumped in with bars as a high risk investment. So small banks won't even be able to get the government to sign off on a loan, and big banks won't talk to you unless you are borrowing $1 million +.

If you don't have the money than you will have to think about taking on investors. How much of the business do they get and for what cost? Just remember the more partners you take on the more diluted your shares become the longer it will take to make any money. Starting a brewery is crazy expensive even if you bootstrap it. ESPECIALLY if you are hiring out as much as you are already thinking about.

The market for used equipment is drying up like crazy because everyone who has done a Mr. Beer kit once wants to open a brewery now. It's even HARDER to find nano scale stuff used. You can buy chinese **** for cheap but it might be 202 instead of 304 stainless, which I've seen happen. Quality new equipment is a 8-12 month lead time. One of my homies who bought a kit from a MAJOR player was pushed back 8 months PAST what was promised. There are a lot of new players in the small scale, but most of that equipment is all manually operated and basically oversized homebrew equipment. So expect each turn of your brewery to take longer, which on a small scale can be killer.

THEN, you need to know the ins and outs of your local, state, and federal alcohol laws. OR you going to be paying a lawyer $100 an hour to tell you what you need. In my hometown for example, there are only a certain number of liquor/beer licenses allowed to be give out. So if all of them are gone you are ****ed. So you have to wait for someone to go out of business and hope they let their license run out. BECAUSE they could hold on to it and make you pay them to transfer the license to you. You also need to know all the building and zoning codes. Probably going to spend ass tons of time with the planning committee of your town.

Make sure you understand that you have to have a building rented/bought and equipment at least ordered before you can even get on a list to get inspected. SO hopefully you can negotiate some free rent from your landlord.

These are barely even the basics of getting a place set up. Now you have to know if your place will even make money. How big is the town you live in? What is the market like? What is your competition? How are you going to stand out from everyone else? The days of making money off basic beers are over unless you are the only one in the market. But even small towns have 1-3 breweries now.

Judging by your, "I don't have a million dollars" I assume you are wanting to do a 1-5bbl set up. You need to figure out what kind of profit margins you can make off that. If you have heavy investment, have employees, and are trying to make any money at all you will need to do most all of your sales out of a tap room. Can your town even support the volume of beer you need to push through a tap room to break even?

Most distros won't talk to you with a less than 7bbl kit. Some big boys want 15bbl kits. Then, distro don't pay you **** per keg. Do you have any experience selling beer? Ever been in the industry at all? You are going to need to know the ins and out of selling. What distro will you go with? How many accounts do they have? What is their sell through time? How is the product kept? A pale ale that sits in a non temperature controlled warehouse for 10 weeks is going to be **** no matter what the original beer taste like. So a bar will put that on, it won't sell through and they'll never buy your stuff again. Unless they have the local schick, there are too many good choices now. Bars have almost a paralysis of choice now. Why as a bar would I pick your product when even Three Floyds will probably be cheaper and it sells itself?

Sorry to be a debbie downer but you need to know all this before you can even figure out if your brewery will break even. And you will lose money. A lot of it starting up. Especially considering it sounds like you want to be pretty conventional.

Now, there are ways to make bootstrapped and small scale work. But you better be the dopest in your area at what ever niche you have. I mean constantly kicking out treehouse level hoppy beers or killer sour beers or something you can make money on. Because on a small scale you will never make money on pales, wits, hefe, porter, ect.

With no industry experience it's going to be a long road fam. I've started and helped start a few craft bars and those were hard. Breweries are 10x harder.

Love,
666
Favorite post of 2017. Don't think there is a thread for top posts, but this damn well should start it or be a part of it.

Having worked on the on-premise side of the business for several years and now the brewery side for about a year now, heed this advice. All of it.
 
Try buying a decent brewing system with confidence, and drive, and let me know how that works out. ;):p
This is why I would be looking to hire an established brewer. I would be the one funding it/creating the idea.

Favorite post of 2017. Don't think there is a thread for top posts, but this damn well should start it or be a part of it.

Having worked on the on-premise side of the business for several years and now the brewery side for about a year now, heed this advice. All of it.
Agreed. It's nice getting some cold hard facts thrown my way to really make me think things through.
 
Sounds like one of those ideas you have with your buddies when you're all lit and then you wake up the next day and you laugh about it cuz it's a horrible idea and you have no clue what you're doing.
 
Sounds like one of those ideas you have with your buddies when you're all lit and then you wake up the next day and you laugh about it cuz it's a horrible idea and you have no clue what you're doing.
Pretty much. For me, though, it would be much more worth my time to dream and push for something that I truly want rather than to sit back and get comfortable with a lifestyle that I don't truly enjoy. Figured coming here to get a feel for what it would take is a good place to get some constructive criticism, which I have gotten.
 
Pretty much. For me, though, it would be much more worth my time to dream and push for something that I truly want rather than to sit back and get comfortable with a lifestyle that I don't truly enjoy. Figured coming here to get a feel for what it would take is a good place to get some constructive criticism, which I have gotten.
TBH, if you needed to come here to figure out a place to look into hiring a brewer, you should probably think really hard about it.
 
Why do you want to own a brewery?

What do you want to do that is unique, interesting, or ground breaking for your market?

What kind of brewery do you want to own? 3K BBLs a year, wild ferments, majority on premise sales? 300K BBLS/Yr slinging pale ales and dry hopped lagers?

Why are you special?

I 100% endorse you opening a brewery, but before even thinking about talking to brewers I would start thinking the hard questions.
 
Why do you want to own a brewery?

What do you want to do that is unique, interesting, or ground breaking for your market?

What kind of brewery do you want to own? 3K BBLs a year, wild ferments, majority on premise sales? 300K BBLS/Yr slinging pale ales and dry hopped lagers?

Why are you special?

I 100% endorse you opening a brewery, but before even thinking about talking to brewers I would start thinking the hard questions.
Will get back to you on these - thanks!

This is 100% the answer I was looking for (as opposed to the "Yeah right, better luck winning the lotto you idiot" response).
 
In my local area - lots of hoppy beers, but no sours, saisons or anything remotely creative.

shaking_head_breaking_bad.gif


Not only Deciduous in your own backyard as ShawDeuce22 mentioned, but within an hour are places like Allagash, Oxbow, Mystic, and Night Shift. You haven't come across any "sours, saisons, or anything remotely creative" from any of these 5 breweries?

If you're not trolling us with this whole thread, that comment would suggest you may be even less prepared for this endeavor than we all originally feared...
 
Will get back to you on these - thanks!

This is 100% the answer I was looking for (as opposed to the "Yeah right, better luck winning the lotto you idiot" response).
Don't worry, people are going to **** on you no matter what.

But to be honest, don't expect to open much anything worth running for less than 3-5 million dollars. Do you want to own the building? Do you want to build new? retrofit a historic building? Set up in a sad industrial park? How big of a tasting room? you mention sour beer, what will you make for the first 12-18 months while **** ages? Do you have sufficient cash to keep things surviving if things don't pan out as expected?

A brewery can be done for much less, (a buddy opened a great little 3bbl tap room only place for about 250K)if you retrofit dairy task and build a farm brewery to keep you and your wife busy. 2 people who make low wages because they have all the equity and all to gain works. As soon as you want to employ people it gets expensive. As soon as you want to grow it gets expensive. As soon as you want to bottle it gets expensive.
 
shaking_head_breaking_bad.gif


Not only Deciduous in your own backyard as ShawDeuce22 mentioned, but within an hour are places like Allagash, Oxbow, Mystic, and Night Shift. You haven't come across any "sours, saisons, or anything remotely creative" from any of these 5 breweries?

If you're not trolling us with this whole thread, that comment would suggest you may be even less prepared for this endeavor than we all originally feared...
In his defense, depending on the area that could be far enough away to not matter. I mean, I live like 15 minutes from Temescal Brewing and get there maybe once a month. If I had a brewery down the street I'd get there way more often. A brewery in my neighborhood would probably never be able to get very large, but if it were well run could make good money as a neighborhood institution. I think that we're going to see a lot more of those smaller brewpub with more limited ambition in the near future.
 
as someone who is currently going through this process:
1) whatever budget you think you need, double it
2) take the sqftage you want and double, if not triple, it (sqft that might work this month/year could be grossly over-filled in 6 months... what about 1-2 years down the road?)
3) whatever budget you think you need, double it
4) if you're thinking of a lease, do you really want to sink $$$$$ into something you can't take with you when your landlord increases your rent or decides not to renew your lease?
5) whatever budget you think you need, double it
6) want to buy commercial space? hope you have up to a year for settlement to complete (commercial real estate is NOTHING like residential real estate)
7) whatever budget you think you need, double it
8) at minimum, double your expected time-line; not only do you have to deal with TTB (current 6 month average processing time that you can't even begin until you have a lease/property ownership settled) and your state ABC there is also local building permitting, health codes (depending on state), etc
9) whatever budget you think you need, double it
10) did you factor rent/mortgage/utilities from day 1 or are you hoping for the landlord to grant you X months free rent? don't assume free/reduced anything
11) whatever budget you think you need, double it
12) tasting room; take sqft of total retail area (often includes bathrooms) and divide by 6. that's the maximum # of people who can be there at any given time (assuming your state fire code is similar to VA). take that tasting room/retail sqftage and divide by 100 - that's the minimal # of parking spaces you need (plus 1 for every 2 employees/shift), etc...
13) whatever budget you think you need, double it
14) who the brewer will be is pretty much irrelevant to starting a brewery
 
Don't worry, people are going to **** on you no matter what.

But to be honest, don't expect to open much anything worth running for less than 3-5 million dollars. Do you want to own the building? Do you want to build new? retrofit a historic building? Set up in a sad industrial park? How big of a tasting room? you mention sour beer, what will you make for the first 12-18 months while **** ages? Do you have sufficient cash to keep things surviving if things don't pan out as expected?

A brewery can be done for much less, (a buddy opened a great little 3bbl tap room only place for about 250K)if you retrofit dairy task and build a farm brewery to keep you and your wife busy. 2 people who make low wages because they have all the equity and all to gain works. As soon as you want to employ people it gets expensive. As soon as you want to grow it gets expensive. As soon as you want to bottle it gets expensive.
I liked this but a good bit of it is not 100% true.
you can easily setup a successful distributing brewery for 1mil
one can do quality "sours" without kettle souring or requiring 12-18+ months ferm time. many ways to skin a cat...
a 4-bottle filler can be done DIY for about $1000, same with a 4-keg filler.
one would likely be surprised to find that a simple 2-keg washer could be the single most expensive piece of equipment in a small-micro brewery ($8000+ish)!
your best bet to save $$ is to buy used equip
 
I liked this but a good bit of it is not 100% true.
you can easily setup a successful distributing brewery for 1mil
one can do quality "sours" without kettle souring or requiring 12-18+ months ferm time. many ways to skin a cat...
a 4-bottle filler can be done DIY for about $1000, same with a 4-keg filler.
one would likely be surprised to find that a simple 2-keg washer could be the single most expensive piece of equipment in a small-micro brewery ($8000+ish)!
your best bet to save $$ is to buy used equip

Truth, it can be done for less but I would venture executing a packaging brewery for less means a lot of bandaids and ******** that can handled by an experienced ownership, not tenderfoots.

If you bottle condition you can do a six head filler for about 1500 that works great, toss in a pneumatic crowner for 800, a small diaphragm pump for 2L and a few plastic folding tables and you have an awesome setup. I've done 3500 bottles in a day with three guys on a similar setup.

That 8K keg washer will last a few decades, as long as you buy from a proper manufacturer. Premiers will run forever as long as you do a minimal amount of preventative maintenance.

1000 bucks gets you a jimmy rigged series of counter pressure fillers from MoreBeer, which is just a god damned nightmare to use. Slow, oxidative, 100% manual and a shitload of labor expenses.

I also take a great deal of issue with your "double your budget" mantra. If you have to do that, you haven't planned well. Hire good consultants, ask the right people, and your costs will be inline with your projections.
 
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