Micro Brewery idea

endainoz

Hello, after much searching through beer forums looking for info, I've decided to start a topic with a lot of questions and hopefully will have a few answered.

Firstly some information about me, I'm from a very popular tourist area in the west of Ireland and have been working in a bar dealing mainly with tourists for the past 15 years or so and have to admit I'm fairly burnt out from it and looking to get into something else instead.

The idea for this project is not for a full time income but more of a sideline to add to my main business which is farming. Literally every second tourist I have dealt with up to now are constantly asking when ordering drinks "do you have any local beers sold here?" The answer is always something like "no but we do have a decent range of craft beers...."

Anyway, my point is that there is a huge demand for something that isn't really there. But this will not be on a big scale, my intention in the beginning would be to supply just three or four pubs locally initially and see what happens after that.

To explore the idea a bit more, I attended a day course in Galway explaining the Speidel Braumeister system, which as many of you know is a simple to use semi automated system that that is very straightforward.

The company that set up this one day course are homebrew-west and they also offererd their services for people who wanted to develop their own unique recipe for a beer.

My intention is to buy a 50l braumeister system to brew a red ale and maybe a pale ale into 500ml bottles. and convert a disused shed into a brewing area. Also I'd need to add a large fridge and an industrial sized sink. I'm sure there are plenty more things that I would need to do but that is the main reason I'm writing this long post!

The real issues I'm dealing with though are the legal and taxation and revenue side of things that seem to be next to impossible to get information on. Is it possible to include this into farm insurance as a business add on? How do you report your brewing to revenue? What kind of a retail license would be needed to be allowed sell directly to the pubs? I'd also heard of constant cctv being needed in brewerys and would this be needed on a much smaller scale?

Thank you so much for reading through this, I do know I have so many more questions than answers at this stage, but what I do have is an idea that I know for certain has great potential, I just need to know from somebody if it's viable or not.

Thanks so much for your time.

BeerNut

Not a homebrew question, so moved to B/W/S.

To get definitive answers to your questions you'll need to talk to your local Revenue Office, and probably your solicitor. You will need a licence to brew ("Manufacturer's Licence - Brewer") from Revenue which will also allow you to sell wholesale, ie to pubs. I'd recommend going to talk to as many local breweries as possible for advice. West Mayo Brewery is a project which I think is along similar lines to what you're planning -- have a word with them. Also join Beer Ireland, a group that was set up specifically for people in your situation.

And good luck!

fobster

Just see the Beer Ireland site seems a bit out of the date! I hope it's more active offline.

"2013 has seen a significant increase in the number of craft breweries in Ireland..."

http://beerireland.ie/craft-brewers/

oblivious

fobster wrote: »

Just see the Beer Ireland site seems a bit out of the date! I hope it's more active offline.

"2013 has seen a significant increase in the number of craft breweries in Ireland..."

http://beerireland.ie/craft-brewers/

*cough* Beoir

BeerNut

fobster wrote: »

Just see the Beer Ireland site seems a bit out of the date! I hope it's more active offline.

I understand it has a forum, but you have to join to see it.

Tube

You can join the Beer Ireland Associates group, which communicates via Facebook. You can ask questions there.

There is a Beer Ireland Professional member group but you have to be in the industry to join, i.e. have some qualifications under your belt or have at least filed your paperwork with the CRO. i.e. registration of a Limited Company. There is a fee of €25 to join then.

The website is out of date as we're putting our efforts into a new one.

Losty Dublin

A couple of years ago I visited West Mayo and they couldn't have been nicer and more friendly. Theirs is a small set up and they run exactly on the lines as you seem to want to. Thus far they are doing well and their beer is in plenty of local bars and moves well; luckily for them but Mayo is a county of people who aren't afraid to back their own kind

In the meantime you should home brew and home brew and home brew and them home brew some more.

oblivious

@endainoz

This a good blog post by someone also setting up a brewery, UK based but the information is still revelent

http://www.graphedbeer.com/2016/01/so-you-wanna-open-brewery-part-i.html?m=1

endainoz

Thank you so much for all the help guys, I'm going to try to get in contact with the west mayor brewery and hopefully attend a couple of the courses to learn more too

The Hill Billy

Your questions on legal & taxation matters may be better addressed in the Entrepreneurial & Business Management forum in the Biz category.

Losty Dublin

OP, this may be of interest to you.

http://www.bordbia.ie/industry/events/bordbiaeventlisting/pages/EventDetail.aspx?eventid=403

PixelTrawler

I have the 20l Braumeister. Takes a few hours to do a brew. Be a long day to run two brews on it... If you could manage two youd be looking at about 100 bottles a day worth... Then theres all the other jobs and running the business, deliveries etc. With the 50l u might need to factor in a winch to lift the grain pipe. Great machines though. Although its automated theres still a fair bit of minding it, prepping it and its a ball ache to clean. Especially around the element and you dont want that getting crusted up. You'll be attending it the end of the mash, and prepping the cooling stage, and the cleaning. You'll get some spare time during the mash and boil.

How many batches could you ferment at once?

Im just wondering is a single 50l going to cut it to run a business, and earn a living. Seems too small? I presume youd be manually bottling and labelling?

You might also find it very hard to make traction with 3 or 4 local pubs...

Sorry to say but its hard to see it as a viable strategy...i just can't see the revenue, and the equipments not cheap. I could be completely wrong of course.

Do you have a few people to divide up the work?

endainoz

Hi folks sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but seen as I work seasonally and have some free time over the winter, I'm going to do a little bit more research into the idea of a small set up.

I would agree with most people here that it probably isn't very viable right now, I do also fear the craft brewery market could be near saturation point too and only areas like cities or places with tourism will continue the trend, at least for a while.

I'm not going to set my sights too high however, will start with the homebrew idea after being inspired by family members making wine and the like. If I had a final figure in a start up size and maybe go from there, much, much market research is needed however and much learning from my side is needed too.

oblivious

endainoz wrote: »

Hi folks sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but seen as I work seasonally and have some free time over the winter, I'm going to do a little bit more research into the idea of a small set up.

I would agree with most people here that it probably isn't very viable right now, I do also fear the craft brewery market could be near saturation point too and only areas like cities or places with tourism will continue the trend, at least for a while.

I'm not going to set my sights too high however, will start with the homebrew idea after being inspired by family members making wine and the like. If I had a final figure in a start up size and maybe go from there, much, much market research is needed however and much learning from my side is needed too.

Have you thought about cider? As a farmer there is an exemption allowing you to sell cider made on your land as long as it not your main income

endainoz

Interesting, didn't know that. Where can I get more info on this?

oblivious

David llewellyn is the man you should talk too,

https://llewellynsorchard.ie/

endainoz

Will be sure to send him an email. Thanks! Now when you say 'made on Your Own land' does that mean the apples need to be grown on the land too? That may be an issue for me being a couple of miles from the coast...

oblivious

To be honest i am not quite sure, but I suspect the apple would have to grown on your land. But David will be able to answer your question, as he took the case against revenue

rubadub

In another recent thread someone had an interesting comment about buying cider which was just beginning to ferment and was so allegedly legal to sell, presumably as apple juice, as it was also presumably/allegedly still under the legal % allowed, but with active yeast. The likes of cidona is actually mildly alcoholic, but under the limits where excise duty applies, just like "non alcoholic beers" which are still at a low %. They were told to leave it a few weeks more to ferment fully. I know your average bulmers drinker would not be impressed by this.

I know ~20years ago there was a loophole in the uk allowing people to come along and pour yeast into a big fermentation tank and so technically have made homebrew themselves, they come back many weeks later and have had "helpers" bottle the beers and so avoid excise as they have just technically made homebrew themselves and just employed "helpers" to bottle it.

There was also a case in the UK where a "vineyard" as excise exempt as it was a tourist attraction. So busloads of tourists were coming to visit and buy their wine. But it was then discovered they had loads of empty wine kits found in their bins, just brewing homebrew kits and selling it, making out like they had produced it all themselves.

L1011

Our beer duty is not excessive and is halved for microbreweries. Licence admin will cost less than challenging a case for selling illegally.

Duty here is OTT on everything else but again trying to abuse a loophole will cost you lots and lots