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When walking through a brewery, attention is often paid to the workhorse brewhouse, the large-barrel mash tun doing a yeoman’s lift and the large fermenters where the magic is happening. More and more these days there are little brew kits tucked in a corner or off to the side that are not as flashy, but are doing the heavy research and development lift, resulting in beers that could one day get a full commercial release. The pilot brewery.
When selecting your brewing equipment, there are a number decisions to make that might not be obvious. Great beer can be brewed on any virtually any system, but selecting the right equipment for your brewery is dependent on your processes, your beer, and your budget. In this webinar, we’ll cover a range of topics to consider when shopping for your brewery equipment.
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If you are looking to start a new brewery or expand your existing facility, there are a lot of choices in the type of equipment you can buy.
The craft brewing industry is never static, and with breweries expanding, moving locations or in some cases closing the doors, the auction blocks are busy.
Ranging from a 250-bbl unused brewhouse to mead and cider equipment and even a turnkey brewery, a variety of auction houses are now taking bids.
In an industry in post-pandemic flux, there are opportunities. Here is a list of four active auctions:
Pumps – A portable centrifugal pump is needed for the cleaning tanks. It can also be used to transfer the beer from one tank to another, or to turn a brew over on itself in situations such as dry hopping. Two portable pumps are much better than just one. And ask for spare seals.
Hoses – A number of sanitary beer hoses are needed. Five and ten footers for cleaning tanks. Longer hoses for transferring the beer from the brewhouse to the fermenters, for use with the filter, and for the transfer from the brite tank to packaging. 1 ½” sizing with triclamp fittings is fairly standard. At well over $10 per foot plus expensive fittings and clamps make sure you receive as many hoses as possible. “Garden” style hose for general cleanup will generally not be supplied as part of the system.
Fittings – Stainless steel tri-clamps, Tees, Elbows, Sanitary butterfly valves, gaskets. You never have quite enough of them!
Installation assistance and customer support are critical components of a turnkey purchase. Installation assistance can vary greatly in scope. Make sure you understand, preferably in writing, what the seller plans to offer in assistance. What is the additional fee, and what will you need to reach out for additional outside help to accomplish. The list can be a short as a few electrical and plumbing needs. On systems larger than 20-bbl, many suppliers send a representative or team out to make sure the brewhouse is put together correctly and functionally. It’s not uncommon for a representative to expect a labor force to be provided to work under their supervision. This is an important area to go over closely with the supplier of a turnkey system to prevent as many expensive surprises as possible.
It is also important for you to have a competent brewer on hand during the installation to ensure that the brewery will operate the way you expect it to and is capable of making the styles of beer you’re planning to make. There are many seemingly minor details that can become major problems later if not addressed early in the installation.
The expectation with a turnkey installation is that you will have a functional brewhouse, fermenters, brite tanks, cooling systems (for both the brewhouse and tanks), a filter (if needed), the required pumps and hoses, and a setup for cleaning and filling kegs. What size and level of equipment the package actually comprises varies with the size and scope of the planned brewery. The needs for a nano brewery project are much easier to meet than those of a larger system. The complexity and amount of peripheral equipment necessary to maintain a brewery escalates quickly as the brewery size increases.
Hot Water Source – A lot of hot water is needed to make beer. 170 degree water is much hotter than what comes out of your home hot water heater and requires special considerations to be used safely. The water can be heated via electrical heating elements in small to medium systems but steam or occasionally direct flame is needed for larger volumes of water.
Hot Liquor Tank – A tank to hold and heat water is common for brewhouses. It allows the brewer to prepare and hold significant amounts of hot water. It is useful to have the hot water tank that holds twice as much water as the batch size when brews are made in quick succession and it also enables recovery of the hot cooling water created during the wort cooling step.
On-demand Water Heater – These are very useful for small amounts of water, to boost the temperature of water for purposes such as sparging, or in place of the hot liquor tank in a small to medium size system. They can be quite energy efficient as a large mass of water is not maintained hot all of the time. On demand heaters are available in larger capacities and can be used to create lots of hot water if they have a sufficient source of steam, natural gas/propane, or a very large heating element. They can be also be used in conjunction with a hot water tank, serving to boost the water temperature as needed. For example the hot liquor tank could be kept at 154 degrees, with the on demand water heater boosting the heat of the water used for sparging to 170. The downside to using an on demand water heater in place of a hot liquor tank is that you cannot recover the water and heat that comes out of the wort chiller. It also makes water treatments more challenging.
Fermenters – There are many choices regarding fermenters. They can be horizontal or vertical, dish or cone bottomed, jacketed or single wall. Doors can be on the top or on the side. The main requirements are that the tank can be safely cleaned and sterilized, that the tank be made of material that will not taint the beer, and that proper fermentation temperatures can be maintained. The most commonly accepted standard for craft breweries is an insulated vertical stainless steel tank with a cone bottom, a manhole on the side, glycol cooling jackets on both the cone and sides, CIP attachments, and an adjustable racking port. The cone bottoms allow for the efficient removal of yeast from the beer after fermentation. The glycol jackets and insulation make it possible to install the tanks almost anywhere.
Jacketed Fermenter – Glycol jackets allow the brewer to adjust the temperature inside the tank. A brewer can ferment the beer at one temperature, attenuate it at another, and then cool it down to an aging temperature cold enough to encourage the yeast to settle out of the beer. Surrounding the tank with insulation and cladding it will allow a tank to be located in warm rooms or even outside.
Single Wall Fermenter – Single walled tanks such as Grundies require the brewer to regulate the fermentation temperature by controlling the temperature of the room they are in. Dropping the beer temperature after fermentation is complete is difficult without moving the beer to a different tank and room for aging. As tanks grow larger, the ability to maintain a desirable fermentation temperature in a single walled fermenter becomes more and more challenging. There can be significant temperature spikes inside the tank during active fermentation with this method, contributing to higher esters and potential off flavors.
By Jack Owen
So you’ve decided to start a brewery and have just begun to look into acquiring the necessary equipment. The multitude of categories that equipment is sold under quickly becomes daunting in the bewildering complexity of areas one needs to search. Still there’s the lingering doubt “What have I missed?” Then a term jumps out, the clouds part and the angels sing! “Turnkey.” Is this the answer to all of your problems? Could you get all of the equipment needed in one fell swoop?
What exactly is covered by the term “turnkey system”? The initial assumption is that you will get all of the equipment needed to brew beer, delivered and ready to be used. Buy some malt and hops and you are in the professional beer business. But is it a good decision, sourcing every item from one place? Perhaps certain pieces are better purchased separately from companies that specialize in a specific area, like filters, allowing you to get the piece that best suits your needs.
The first question a prospective nano brewery owner should ask themselves is not “How much money can I expect to make?” but rather, “How much money can I afford to spend?”
From equipment costs to building expenses to licensing, the cost of opening even a small brewery can be staggering. And that’s before you brew your first batch.
The equipment costs for starting a nano brewery may be significantly lower than those for a full-sized brewery – although a new turnkey 3-barrel system can still run upwards of $45,000. But just as brewing beer is but a small part of the job of owning a brewery, the equipment costs are just a fraction of the total startup capital.
Today’s prospective nano brewer has more options than ever before when it comes to equipment. Whether the increase in the number of companies making nano-sized equipment has grown as a result of the nano boom, or whether the availability of equipment has fueled the growth spurt is a chicken-and-egg question. Regardless, you will have plenty of choices no matter what size system you choose.
Budget will likely be the primary deciding factor in the system you choose. Those with limited resources may choose a used brewery. With many nano breweries scaling up to larger systems, the used market is more robust these days.
When buying a used system, you want to make sure it will fit your particular needs – or be easily adapted. The savings from a used system can be eaten up rapidly by retrofitting costs. Whenever possible, it is a good idea to see the used system you are considering buying while it is still in operation so you can make sure you are not investing in another brewer’s headache.
The term “nano brewery” may be a fairly recent addition to the craft brewing lexicon, but the concept of small breweries with a pint-sized brew length is nothing new. Although Anchor Brewing in San Francisco might be considered the first American craft brewery, it was New Albion Brewing of Sonoma, Calif., that showed other entrepreneurs they could build a brewery from the ground up. New Albion opened in 1976 using a 55-gallon brewing system.
There is no denying that as total craft beer production continues to skyrocket, so does the number of breweries that are starting with smaller than traditional batch sizes. Just as the definition of “craft beer” can be a slippery subject, there is no definitive answer as to what constitutes a nano brewery. And, likewise, there is no comprehensive list or accounting for how many nano breweries are operating in the United States.
The most-widely accepted description of nano breweries is a brewery that produces in batches of three barrels or smaller. Based on that criteria, there are upwards of 300 breweries operating in the United States as of summer 2014 that would qualify as nano breweries. That would mean nano breweries account for nearly 10 percent of the nation’s craft breweries.
The following article was posted on Feb. 18, 2015. It has been reviewed and updated as necessary by the ProBrewer editorial staff.
So far, all of the considerations we have discussed have centered on the expense side of the ledger. But there is good news: Good beer is worth money. And, once you have navigated all the red tape to get licensed, scavenged the money to build a brewery and actually brewed some beer, there are people out there willing to pay you for your efforts.
But there are still many choices you have to make. The biggest is who is going to be your customer – the consumer across the bar at your own taproom or the retailer at a pub, bottle shop or growler station.
Nano Q&A
Nano brewery basics
Nano brewery expenses and funding
Nano brewery equipment
Finally, time to sell your beer
You have loved the craft and science of brewing since your first kit, and early on you fell in love with your hobby, and your friends with your beer. Sure, it’s free, but they really like it, right? And now you are ready to take the next step, but don’t want to risk the whole farm and your children’s college fund. Enter the Nano. Small scale brewing for big time dreamers.
Beware! But go for it. Your Nano is a business and you must treat it that way. It is also a brewery and you’d better be making some great liquid. You will not get a pass from consumers just because you ground your malt by hand with a mallet and a flat rock, or made it 60 gallons at a time!