So how do you go about selling your best brews for profit whilst dodging the law???
YOU DON'T !!!
Simple as that. No 'contributions to ingredients' or 'research' tin ********, no dodgy little grey area side-steps to try and outsmart the tax man or the law.
Being able to make our own brew (regardless of the way you want to look at it) is a priviledge gifted to us by Mr Whitlam - and people who abuse it in the fashion you are considering will only ever end up stuffing it up for the rest of us. The fact that you are talking about 'a tidy profit' from it as far as I am concerned drops you into a different category from us here altogether.
Tell your mates to HTFU and brew it themselves. The 'donations tin' is at the HBS - they can make their 'donation' there & turn up to your place with a bag of grain etc so you can help them make their own beer. I don't agree with the 'if you must do it keep it quiet' advice. Just don't do it. As far as I'm concerned this thread is placing our favourite past-time in jeopardy, and making us all look like a bunch of dodgy little bootleggers - and it should have been removed by the mods the minute it was posted.
Ring your local police, council & liquor licensing board and query the penalties involved for illegal production & sale of alcohol without a licence, tax evasion, excise evasion, breach of council planning & consents, breach of EPA regulations (all of which come into play the minute you want to sell beer) - then there will be legal fees, penalties on top of the unpaid tax, GST and excise, confiscation of equipment and possibly even the property that the brewing was done on (proceeds of crime act), JAIL, CRIMINAL RECORD..........
Hope your 'tidy profit' makes up for all that..... :huh: Surely it's much easier for your mates to come & do a brew day with you instead of make you risk all that? It only takes ONE person to accuse you of selling it for you to be up to your eyeballs in sh*t.