East Durham Brewery Project

mickthetrick said:

not having brewed a beer and wanting to go professional is a massive task and im afraid brewing them styles of ipa you wont last very long. there is just not the demand to make a living on such a small scale. session beers of 3.5 - 4 % is were your bread and butter is. the average drinker will only try the odd pint of the ipa but will happily have several of a session beer. landlords can buy beer at a very reasonable price and the profit margin for the brewer is small.
you also have the council to deal with and that can be very tricky indeed.
i wish you luck.

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Indeed it is a massive step. But I have as long as it takes. I'm even open to completing some courses if I need to.

I have a business partner for all the financial side of things and a reasonable amount of capital.

Your comments on beer types is interesting too - I have ideas, but for sure I have decided nothing.

Market research is a big part of the project.

mickthetrick said:

brewlab studants were invited to a night last month in Fitzgeralds bar in sunderland. there was student brewers from all o. session beers of 3.5 - 4 % is were your bread and butter is. the average drinker will only try the odd pint of the ipa but will happily have several of a session beer.

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Hi Mick,

could you please explain what a session beer is please?

well in general its a beer that you can sit and have a session drinking several of . like a boddintons bitter, butcome bitter, timothy taylor landlord and the like not just bitter though. milds, blonds etc.
general drinkers wouldnt go out to have 8 or so pints of a higher strength brew.

Ha in my day the session beers were the 3.2-3.4% bitters, tho that was when a brewery would brew a bitter, a best bitter and then a top draw bitter, our ol local brewery now closed, Morrells produced a bitter circa 3.2% the best was circa 3.8% and Varsity the top draw pint was something like 4.4% if memory serves, i could be out a few points.. it was a good 15+ years ago i propped up the local bar ..

mickthetrick said:

well in general its a beer that you can sit and have a session drinking several of . like a boddintons bitter, butcome bitter, timothy taylor landlord and the like not just bitter though. milds, blonds etc.
general drinkers wouldnt go out to have 8 or so pints of a higher strength brew.

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Cough.

;-)

But I do love a pint of Landlord. Actually, that was one of the 3 beers that pulled me away from lager. First was Summer Lightening, whilst working in a Wetherspoons in Nottingham, then it was Cockerhoop & TTL in Pooley Bridge.

I must admit, I'm now the type of person who buys a pint because he's "never seen that one before"
But I do love my stronger stuffs as well.

So I guess today is Day 17.

Today is the day I take a large brush to the garage and start sweeping it out.
Assuming my neck doesn't get any worse afterwards, tomorrow will be jet-wash day and then I'll go and buy the paints I need.

Starting with a clean sweep eh ?

I did the same with my brew area (sweep but not paint), and it makes a big difference. Like a new lease of life.

The 7 hours of sweeping and jet washing nearly killed me.

Another few hours today painting, but it's taking much longer than expected.

Loads of pictures on my phone. Will have to get round to uploading them all.

No pics since the painting (only 75% complete - will take one when its done).
But here's a Flikr album.

https://flic.kr/s/aHskaGDGYC

Its a tad annoying that the difference isn't as clear as I'd have liked. It was absolutely filthy when I first opened the door. Its still badly stained etc, but its far far cleaner now.
The white masonry paint is making a huge difference, though. Got some grey garage floor paint to go down last too, which should set it all off very nicely.

PS - 3 days after the last work, and my hands are still "dead" :)

Had a question from ManseMasher
"Plenty of room for a good set up in there! Get your water storage sorted?"

Yes, its quite large compared to most modern garages, I was very happy when I realised that.

As for water, its going to be 25L food safe jerry cans, filled from a newly-fitted outside tap from my friend's house over the road.
Running the hose and power for the jetwash was far too much of a faff, so had to abandon the plan to put a 1000L water tank in there.

Businesses live or die on the quality of their sales teams. I know that from experience. It is THE most important factor in success. Be aware of that before sinking hard earned cash into an area of trade packed with competition. Good luck.

Tony1951 said:

Businesses live or die on the quality of their sales teams. I know that from experience. It is THE most important factor in success. Be aware of that before sinking hard earned cash into an area of trade packed with competition. Good luck.

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Can't disagree with any of that.

To be honest, I made the decision to vastly slow down the plans a few weeks ago and spend most of Year1 learning the process and perhaps creating a little word-of-mouth with friends and family.

Any decision to go towards a full microbrewey would be aligned to a proper business plan. Thankfully my business partner is a Financial Controller for a large company, so that part will be well-covered.

That does leave Marketing and Market Research very much on the table and needing a lot of work.

Wise to cover all bases as you say you will be doing before piling money into your plan. Best of luck. I wasn't trying to discourage. I just hate to see good chaps lose their money and I've seen a few do exactly that. Two of my sons and my soon to be daughter in law run their own businesses. Two of the three are in business to business marketing and they can relate some sad tales of people losing everything they have, throwing money into black hole businesses that never had a chance from the start. Two thirds of businesses fail in the first year, mostly from poor marketing or from lack of understanding of how much competition they would face. One of the saddest tales I know personally was a couple who sold up their house and invested the lot in a tied pub that was about a hundred yards away from a really great free house with loads of interesting guest beers. They had a few setbacks and after a year they had lost every penny they had in the venture. They were a nice couple who just hadn't grasped the struggle they would have to lure people into their pub when their beer was no match for the beer down the road and the establishment was a bit run down in comparison to the other.

EDIT:

Having said the above, I am a pessimist and always see the pitfalls. I didn't think my eldest son's business had a chance when he started it in 2010. He now has ten employees, has given them all a pay rise and is paying himself very nicely. He is a class act salesman though and spends about 80% of his long working hours on that, while good employees run the operations side.

I think its actually very useful to hear the pitfalls to be honest.

And I certainly won't be putting my house into this!

One of my kids expressed interest in starting up a microbrewery so I did some rough back of an envelope calculations of how much beer would be needed to be made per week to produce a minimum wage income. Don't think I even included business rates in it, but the result was quite a lot of beer, though well within the capabilities of one person to produce - then the problem, how the hell do you shift that quantity of beer. Oh, you haven't got time because you're busy actually making it. So you have to employ someone else to sell it for you. Instant doubling of the amount you have to make!

Cwrw666 said:

One of my kids expressed interest in starting up a microbrewery so I did some rough back of an envelope calculations of how much beer would be needed to be made per week to produce a minimum wage income. Don't think I even included business rates in it, but the result was quite a lot of beer, though well within the capabilities of one person to produce - then the problem, how the hell do you shift that quantity of beer. Oh, you haven't got time because you're busy actually making it. So you have to employ someone else to sell it for you. Instant doubling of the amount you have to make!

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Bottle on Monday, Distribute on Tuesday, Brew Wed, Thu & Fri :)

Yes, I did the same "fag packet" calculations to make a small income and it did seem possible. There are units up here to rent very cheaply and with the tax break for micros, it does seem do-able.

The problem as I saw it was finding people to buy it, rather than actually getting it to them.

Actually think bottle costs will be a problem too. How do breweries absorb the cost of the glass bottle on every sale?

Many do it by selling kegged beer and also selling a lot, a whole bunch of small profits = a big income

Slight set back.

On one hand, Ive found the roof is perfectly water tight. Loads of rain these last few days, and the roof has held up perfectly.
On the other hand, sadly, the base of one of the walls is a sieve. I went to finish the painting today & found the place was flooded - going to have to find a way to stop the water getting in. The challenge there is that I have no access to the outside of the garage at the rear - its in someone else's garden.

Hmmmmm.

My method would be stick a load of silicone in it, that would solve the problem haha. There's probably going to be some better ideas though so don't go buying the silicone yet

bquiggerz said:

Many do it by selling kegged beer and also selling a lot, a whole bunch of small profits = a big income

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I'd go kegs too :-

Probably easier to get a landlord to try a keg than bottles.
Less 'units' to deal with (outbound and inbound).
No worries about selling bottle bombs or fire extinguishers.

I'd talk to a few landlords first and warm them up to the potential of taking a few barrels from a local start up.