Going Commercial - What Do You Need To Know?

[///]

I am a bit confused, the ATO regulations do not forbear the design of a brewery; you send them plans outlining the bonded areas you choose and the layout of the tanks. They require you to have tanks calibrated in situ, but apart from that the rest of the regulartory requires are local council and relevant state licensing parties.

Excise though is already known; at current rates approx 25% of the wholesale cost of a 'standard' (say 4.7%) kegged beer, with an uplift for bottles. The rates are easily calculated and passed onto the consumer. It would be great to have excise relief, but a) the brewing industry is too small and b)most breweries are metropolitan not regional (like the 2000-odd wineries.)

The exploration I would like to see for anyone starting off is the impact of the carbon tax and what affect this will have on consumption rates for smaller producers. There is not one part of the brewing process besides picking the glass off the table and swallowing that uses significant amounts of carbon fuels. I dare say the large brewers would be doing significant work in this aspect, perhaps they could be approached to give an idea of the impact. Regardless, I doubt anyone in the room would be left a labour voter after the exercise ...

Other aspects like Oc Health and other regulatory aspects would be also worthwhile. These sorts of aspects often are forgotten in small businesses till someone gets hurt ...

Scotty

 

[Brewers Choice]

Thanks guys for all the input. One area I think we are going to be well covered on is the marketing side of brewing. Our contract brewer (Wade Curtis) is having some notable successes, even for his small scale operations. It may help that Wade's other job is in Marketing for one of the big airlines. But he certainly knows how to get his beers into papers, on radio, tv, etc.

We also will have Costa Nickias, from Beverage and Brewing Consulting, who has had input at Moobrew, Bluetongue and MT Brewing, and various other breweries around Australia. He should be able to cover the drier areas. Of our two commercial brewers, one is in the process of setting up a brewery (and going through all the pain at the moment) and the other, 4 Pines has gone from a brewpub at Manly in Sydney to now having their beers in Dan Murphy's, so should be well able to advise on the pitfalls and joys of going commercial.

We will see whether we can get the session fully taped to get up on the web for AHB users.

Please keep the ideas coming. Cheers

 

[Janelle Kerr]

Sounds good. If you do get any of the conference taped, please let me know and I'll put it on our website for the Queensland Brewers who can't make it and are interested in the topic. That would be www.queenslandbrewers.com.au
Looking forward to it, and I just wish I was going to the Beer matching Dinner that goes with it!

 

[Janelle Kerr]

As reply to ///, Yeah, I had thought that the local council may be a problem also. I recall a few years ago, (love him or hate him) David Koch from Sunrise trying to drum up some support for the reduction of the excise on the craft beer industry. As he is like a dog with a bone once he starts to support something.

As for the carbon tax, keeping in mind that I only have homebrewing experience. It is usually things like the Carbon Tax that will make big business investigate new ways of doing things. I would like to find out whether some sort of carbon tax credits would cover the re-use and recycling of water in the beer making process.
Does being regional make a difference in the excise issue?
But as far as costs go, are they not increasing anyway? And as for the smaller brewers, I thought there was tax relief for them so as to not cut them out of the manufacture process.

If anyone knows more about this subject, I am interested in more information as a lot has to be taken into consideration for someone thinking about brewing commercially.

 

[///]

PAst just the brewery, if any new plants are going to have a bar, perhaps a session on setting u and considerations for a beer dispense system could be of benefit - when I went into our pub the new system cost us double the budget. That hurt. I can dob in Brett Thompson and his team at Hoshi as a wealth of knowledge on dispense, and the XXXX draught services team in QLD also know thier sh*t (as you would expect).

Also maybe roll in some safety and OH&S. Assuming the majority of attendees, the QLD GOvt will have folks who can come out and discuss setting up a safety program and the local requirements. Theres been plenty of small business folks go to gaol cos' they did not set basic good safety practices in place.

Extend that to also a representative from QLD Liquor and Licensing (proper name is?) who could also add value and probably demystify the process and what is allowable. Again, Brisbane City Council would have a liason officer who could give a breif on DA's.

The equipment is the easy part, its the actual set-up and running of the business that takes all the romance out of the idea ...

Scotty

 

[MHB]

Some "Light" reading

Mark

http://www.ato.gov.au/government/content.a...p;page=1&H1

 

[Airgead]

The exploration I would like to see for anyone starting off is the impact of the carbon tax and what affect this will have on consumption rates for smaller producers. There is not one part of the brewing process besides picking the glass off the table and swallowing that uses significant amounts of carbon fuels. I dare say the large brewers would be doing significant work in this aspect, perhaps they could be approached to give an idea of the impact. Regardless, I doubt anyone in the room would be left a labour voter after the exercise ...

Scotty

Scotty... If you want some carbon tax advice, give me a yell.

In short though - not much impact. There would be no direct impact as even the largest brewery is way under the threshold for having to pay the tax. Growing barley is agriculture which is exempt. Fuel is exempt till past 2015. The main impact will be in power costs and there mostly in the malting process which is the biggest energy input into brewing. Power prices will go up due to the tax but the tax related rises are projected to be only 20% or so (depending on location etc) of the total projected price rises which are mostly due to network upgrades.

Essentially, energy prices will go up a little more than they would otherwise and that's about it.

If you want some specifics, give me a call. Happy to help out.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Janelle Kerr]

I thought I read something about the "Space Beer" Brewer's being at the conference? Is this true? As I watched a documentary type of thing, but I missed half of it.

 

[Janelle Kerr]

Also, after watching the Heston Blumenthal episode about food and drink flavours at altitude, I will be wanting to check that out...

 

[Janelle Kerr]

Catalyst it was......

 

[Brewers Choice]

Last chance for input for the QHC
We will be setting out the topics for our speakers for the Going Commercial session at the Queensland Homebrewing Conference, this week. If you have any more thoughts on what should be discussed during this session, we would love to hear from you soon. We really want this topic to be something that answers a lot of the questions that most keen homebrewers ask themselves (or their mates) at one time or another over a few cold ones, late at night.

If you have wondered what it takes to just get your beer onto a tap in a pub, or even how hard would it be to set up your own craft brewery, we have speakers right across the spectrum that can answer these questions. So ask away.

 

[Brewers Choice]

Thanks everyone for the input on this thread. We will b e drafting the topic today to give to all the speakers. it should be a great session with everything covered from brewing your first commercial beer to running a craft brewery, with some really good speakers that know what they are talking about (mostly from hard experience!). If you have any other suggestions, just shoot me an email.

See you at the conference (www.theqhc.com.au)

 

[WSC]

What did everyone think about this session?

I had fun, if that counts for anything.

 

[Florian]

I thought it was good to approach it from different perspectives and mostly base it on first hand experience, be it from the four pines guy, yourself or that consultant. That way it's easier for the audience to relate to the subject, especially if no personal plans for going commercial exist.

Am glad it didn't turn into a debate about excise, as that is a subject that is (in theory) pretty straight forward and can be easily grasped withing half an hour reading time if interested.

 

[vaanderal]

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but was there any notes or recordings collected from this conference? I would love to get my hands on it!