Thinking about starting a Nano brewery?

There’s plenty of advantages of starting your own nano brewery. There’s some tax benefits which can be quite favorable. And of course, there’s free beer. Who is going to complain about the free beer?

We’ve all been there. Enjoying a brew with some close friends, and suddenly – the million dollar idea pops up. Lets start our own Brewery! It’ll be fun and we have unlimited drinks.

Before you know it, you’ve outgrown your simple homebrewer set up and want to move up to larger brewing equipment. One problem, the dream 5 BBL brewing system won’t come cheap.

The figures for starting a nano brewery vary immensely. It can be anywhere from 20k-100k for a small location. Depending on the size of your location and goals, you won’t want to go any smaller than 4 BBL. Any smaller and you won’t be able to maintain the retail side of running a nano brewery. In order for the brewery to make money, you’ll need to maintain a tasting room or some type of restaurant ( it’s cheaper to do a tasting room ).

Turning something that’s your passion into your business is no easy feat. We’ve all heard horror stories from starting breweries. Whether it’s licensing issues to picking the right equipment, there’s plenty of planning to be done when it comes to this.

Here are some tips we have for you if you’re thinking about starting a nano-brewery.

1. Your Building. We’re not talking about the location – We’re talking about the building you’re going to base your brewery out of. It’s not as simple as just picking out the space with the most free room. You’ll want to consider other factors like city zoning, the buildings flooring, and other zone codes you may have to adhere to. It can be expensive to modify the building to meet city codes.
2. Consider the capacity of your nano breweryy. While everyone wants to start with a 15 BBL set up, but it’s not for everyone. A nano brewery is classified as any brewing set up under 6 BBL. Another important thing to consider is how big your location is – you’ll want to properly allocate space for the tasting room aspect.
3. Make sure your business plan is sound. Estimating your breweries capacity is crucial to calculating potential revenue and more. Check the demand of different types of beers for your location.

If you’d like to save a little on the start-up cost, you can look for used equipment in your area. You can potentially save as much as 40% off the list price. Another option is leasing the equipment. There’s many advantages that come with leasing your brewery equipment. You get to maintain your cash flow, have lower start-up costs and have more in the bank to operate. (Speak with your CPA to find out potential tax advantages) You also have the freedom to upgrade your equipment should your brewery become a massive success and you need to upgrade to 30 BBL brewing systems.

We’re here to help, Our Expert Equipment specialist have worked with breweries in the past determining the best equipment for their needs. Try our Lease Calculator feature to estimate potential monthly payments.