600l Brewery Gear For Sale

[Dave86]

Just got a red-duck brewery newsletter (attached) saying they are upgrading from a 600L brew rig to 5000L and the old one is for sale. Imagine the possibilites... one day perhaps

View attachment red_duck_news_9.pdf

 

[dinosaw]

Just got a red-duck brewery newsletter (attached) saying they are upgrading from a 600L brew rig to 5000L and the old one is for sale. Imagine the possibilites... one day perhaps

Spoke to them - over priced - for $70K more you can buy the exact same outfit from DME (and they are not the cheapest).

 

[PostModern]

Just got a red-duck brewery newsletter (attached) saying they are upgrading from a 600L brew rig to 5000L and the old one is for sale. Imagine the possibilites... one day perhaps

They aren't upscaling, they're outsourcing.

 

[Cortez The Killer]

They aren't upscaling, they're outsourcing.

Seems to be the latest craze per the latest beer and brewer

First you develop a marketing image and push that and then worry about brewing

Cheers

 

[devo]

They aren't upscaling, they're outsourcing.

Only until they get the 5000lt set up installed and running which makes perfect sense.

 

[devo]

Spoke to them - over priced - for $70K more you can buy the exact same outfit from DME (and they are not the cheapest).

DME?!...including 6 fermenters etc! I think not.

 

[PostModern]

Only until they get the 5000lt set up installed and running which makes perfect sense.

I didn't read it that way.

Of course we could have invested in a bigger brewery,
and built a cellar door, but as we have to move by
December this year, finding a new location as well
was just not possible. So we opted for out-sourcing,
which will gives us the ability to supply and move
without incumbrances.

So we packed all our recipes and drove up to Mildura
to talk ales. The talented team at Mildura Brewery
are now getting stuck into brewing Red Duck ales,
and we are trying our hardest to maintain the styles
and characters that our beers are associated with.

Not easy when you are scaling up from 600litres to
5000litres, and in a different brewhouse. The process
is taking longer than we hoped, but like all our work
previously, we don't want to rush a good thing.

As I read it, they are currently working on maintaining their styles on the Mildura Brewery's gear. Either I'm right or they write badly.

EDIT: Not that I care, as they don't sell Red Duck anywhere I have ever seen.

 

[Cortez The Killer]

Agreed

Definitely reads like they are outsourcing the brewing function

Cheers

 

[devo]

ahh my misread "Of course we could have invested in a bigger brewery" which I mistook for "Of course we have invested in a bigger brewery"... :huh:

 

[bigholty]

First you develop a marketing image and push that and then worry about brewing

Cheers

Yeah, making beer is the easy bit. Selling it is the hard bit. You could spend $X on a brewery and make 10,000L of the worlds best beer every week and not have anyone buy it. Or you could spend $X on branding and marketing and just bottle up some goat-wee and have people queueing round the block to buy it. Unfortunate, I know. At least we here are doing our bit and supporting good, lesser-know brands.

 

[gibbocore]

i don't see the problem, they're making a business descision that obviously lets them make the same beer (hopefully) in greater quantities, for cheaper. The market/legislation is to blame, not the brewers.

 

[flingard]

I spoke with Scott (Red Duck ) yesterday 20th Sept and they are outsourcing for a couple of years until they get their new brewery and premises as making 6or 7 brews a week in a 600litre system was becoming too hard .Makes sense to me . Flingard

 

[Thirsty Boy]

my main worry is that red duck beers are generally quite good - and a couple of years of being brewed in the mildura brewery might remove that particular aspect. I dont believe I have ever had a beer I was aware of being brewed in that particular brewery, that I thought very much of.

By the time he has a brewery again, he might not have much of a market for his beer.

Kind of a salutory lesson for those with dreams of micro brewery ownership - build yourself a "small" brewery and by the time you are making enough money to not starve, you will need to buy a bigger brewery to be able to meet customer demand.

What do the pro's out there think is the minimum "viable" size for a production brewery??

 

[the_fuzz]

What do the pro's out there think is the minimum "viable" size for a production brewery??

120000 litres every 4 hours, that is if you want to actually make money <_<

 

[winkle]

Should be an ok size for a brewpub.

 

[///]

What do the pro's out there think is the minimum "viable" size for a production brewery??

That for which the sales department can sell at a profit!

Scotty

 

[wessmith]

Spot on Scotty - could not have said it better myself.

Wes

 

[Thirsty Boy]

easy answers - also pointless and irrelevant to the question I asked.

If you have a 100L brewery and you can sell every last drop at a profit - but then you cant meet your customer base's demands for said product - you are going to go out of business - you also might like to see your family occasionally instead of brewing, or one day be able to afford to actually employ a sales department

So somewhere between 100L and 120000L every four hours, there is a (rough) size where you can make a viable, sustainable brewery business, but any smaller will eventually necesitate a size upgrade one day.

Even if the only thing in the world you have to worry about is paying yourself a living wage and paying your overheads, then there will be a minimum size. I cant think of many production breweries (not pub breweries) who have managed to keep everything rolling along with a sub 1000L brewery.

So let me re-phrase - if you want to run a business that can support yourself and your family and maintain that business in the long term, what size brewery would be the minimum that some of the pro's think might be reasonable to build.

 

[PostModern]

I reckon Scotty's answer was spot on. Your 100L example is flawed. Your costs of production have to be counted in the profit-loss equation, so unless you sell your beer for $10 a litre before excise (yes, I'm looking at you, RedOak), you won't be selling for a profit.

Your rephrase is a better question, but I think you're still asking how long is a piece of string.

 

[bigfridge]

easy answers - also pointless and irrelevant to the question I asked.

If you have a 100L brewery and you can sell every last drop at a profit - but then you cant meet your customer base's demands for said product - you are going to go out of business - you also might like to see your family occasionally instead of brewing, or one day be able to afford to actually employ a sales department

So somewhere between 100L and 120000L every four hours, there is a (rough) size where you can make a viable, sustainable brewery business, but any smaller will eventually necesitate a size upgrade one day.

Even if the only thing in the world you have to worry about is paying yourself a living wage and paying your overheads, then there will be a minimum size. I cant think of many production breweries (not pub breweries) who have managed to keep everything rolling along with a sub 1000L brewery.

So let me re-phrase - if you want to run a business that can support yourself and your family and maintain that business in the long term, what size brewery would be the minimum that some of the pro's think might be reasonable to build.

I fear that you answer has already been given, by others and yourself.

"meet your customer base's demands for said product" ie you start with what you can sell and then work backwards to what you need to do to produce it. Make or Buy (ie outsourcing) can also be part of this equation.

As a starting point you can probably expect to make a gross profit at the wholesale level of $1 per litre of finished beer. This will equate to $0.75 per brewhouse litre of capacity, so a 600 litre plant will earn $450 of gross profit per brew.

What else you can earn from that same litre of beer depends on the rest of the business ie food sales etc.

HTH,

Dave