How to Start Your Home Brewery

Brewing is a special kind of art that requires patience, persistence, and passion. Before you can consider starting a brewery at home, you need to learn some crafts and codes around it. After this, you can now create your state-of-the-art brewery.

No doubt, there are many brewery companies around the world with different kinds of drinks that anyone can take. However, the craft brewery business cannot be underestimated, just as the uniqueness that comes with most of the products is inexhaustible. You taste the flavor of some home-brewed products still, even after taking them several hours back. Do you have an idea of a unique home-brewed product that you’re sure will stand right atop a crowd of other ideas? You’re in the right place to give your idea the breath of life.

Vision

What’s your vision? This appears a simple question, but it has left so many people lacking for words. When someone asks what your vision is after you’ve told them that you’re about to create a home brewery business, what would your answer be? In this case, you should know what you want, define your vision, and feed it with hope and reality coupled with hard work.

In fiction writing, every word, action, and inaction contributes to the entire subject matter of the story. Similarly, all activities, decisions, assumptions, and even projections you make should add to the central mission of your business. It’s always the vision first, before the mission. However, both work together for the success of the company. Take a look at most successful breweries around; they all were established on a specific vision, and alongside passion, vision drives a business person.

Have a Model

The essence of having a model is to have an idea of what to do at what time. It’s not rooted in trying to produce the same product as your model with just a change of name, bottle, and some little variation in flavor. Why did you embark on the journey at first? It’s because you felt that your idea is unique and that the taste you’re offering is unprecedented.

It’s noteworthy that whichever model you choose should be compatible with your brand. If the compatibility is not there, there’s little chance that the brand you have selected will be helpful.

Find a Partner

A brewery business is not what you want to try alone. You need a partner who is keen and hard at work on the same dream as yours. This can be a friend with the same goal as you. With co-operation and diligence, you’re likely to grow even beyond your imagination.

Finance

It will amount to a colossal joke if you’re thinking of a brewery without thinking of money. No, this is not in the sense of what you’re going to gain. Instead, it’s about how much you need to invest in the business and how to spend the money. With your partner, you need to develop a financial plan that guides how you spend and instruct what you’re spending on. The most vital part of any project is the financial aspect. Without it, even dreams are liable to death.

There are many ways through which you can fund your business. You can raise some with your partner and borrow from friends, family, organizations, or the government.

Strengthen Your Relationship

Nothing thrives in the absence of love. Whoever you have chosen to partner with should be a friend in all ramifications of the word. This is why it’s essential to partner only with trustworthy people. Your relationship with your partner should be impregnable.

This should be extended to teams you create. After all, Dan Hughes emphasizes such importance of the right relationship in his advice on starting a brewery, as he implicitly states how difficult it would have been for him to establish himself had he not built a good relationship with people around him. Your business doesn’t thrive based on your relationship with your partners and team alone. Even your community should be appropriately dealt with and regarded as a crucial business partner; take social responsibility when needed. None of these go unnoticed.

Know All Regulations

Ignorance is dangerous. It can crumble a million-dollar business. You have to know the rules and regulations guiding your business wherever you’re establishing yourself. Know the laws of states and counties that concern your business in various aspects, including location, production, staffing, remuneration, sales, and distribution. Your business will have limited challenges if you know and abide by rules guiding each phase of your business.

Mind the Location of Your Brewery

You have to be strategic about where you’re choosing to set up your brewery. Some people use a section of their homes, while others don’t. Bear in mind that there are laws guiding location and distance between one home brewery and the other. Know all these before deciding where you’re choosing as the location of your brewery. Also, have you considered how accessible the place would be to buyers? Does your setting allow secure shipping? Those are the factors you’re going to consider when choosing a place to site your breweries.

You also want to add the proximity of competitors while thinking of where to start. Which is the brewery next to your site? Do you have the product it sells yet? Can your unique product stand out amid the multitudes of other unique products, or will you just join a congregation of similar taste?

Equipment

You can’t brew your beer using just a pot, cooking gas, and refrigerator. You need equipment such as a mashing system for heating water and malt, a lautering system that separates your wort from grain residue, and a brewery system, which removes unwanted flavor and solid particles that should not be seen in your home-brewed beer. You would also need a conditioning system, a filtering system, and a packaging system. All these are primary to your microbrewery, so you shouldn’t forget to list the price for the equipment in your financial plan. Each has its purpose, but all work together to place a well-packaged beer in your hand. Having the right equipment for a specific task accelerates processing and enables quality production. In this case, you become confident about your product.

Survey

A market survey is critical. Surveys are not limited to face-to-face inquiries. Create links that allow people to fill in your questionnaire and use relevant market survey apps. This will help you to know if you have chosen the right location for your business. It also guides you to make strategies that will help in dealing with competitions and members of the community where your business is going to be seated.

Sometimes an in-depth survey tells you whether or not to establish the business at all. Many who have set out without adequate surveys have folded back in like a shy snail.

Seek Assistance

You’re allowed to seek assistance, especially on matters about business. No one knows it all, and many who know the business now must have spent some years learning. Ensure you appreciate contributors for their time and ruminate on whatever they say even if it seems awkward. You can pick around two to three experienced people to teach you what you need to learn about a specific aspect of the microbrewery.

What happens if you felt like the advice someone gave wasn’t sound? You can ask other people who are equally experienced in the same field, and you will know what you need to know without much ado.

Design

Have you had a design in mind yet? What do you want your bottle to look like? Maybe you don’t even want to use the regular bottle we see around. You might have another object in mind. Consider also what shape and specific measurements the container of your product is going to be.

What about the logo of the drink and even the taste? All of these are part of the design. You must be so unique that everyone who sips your drink knows where it’s coming from.

To become a successful owner of a home brewery, you would need to be yourself first and be willing to learn patiently. You should measure the weight of your vision and mission and how each influences your business forever. You must have a clear vision in your head of what you want your home brewery business to look like, and you can’t forget your finances, location, and equipment.