I've been lots of places on the internet, reading up on this sort of thing. I googled around, read a lot of threads on probrewer.com, and so on.
At first, I figured that there was absolutely no way I could go pro without going Huge. But I recently read an article in Beer Advocate about Epic Ales up in Seattle, which got me thinking about the possibility again- the brewery is a one-man operation operating on a super-tiny (1bbl) scale.
I did some math on the situation and preliminary numbers indicate that a 1-10 hL system would yield enough income to keep me in business and making enough money to live on, given certain preconditions- one being actually selling the beer and two being the still-murky regulatory world of brewing. I could probably run such a system by myself indefinitely, possibly hiring help to run the tasting room if business picks up.
I'd done some investigation into this already as part of my first commercial business plan (a subscription model). Living in California makes things somewhat easier, you can self-distribute.
I'm a pretty smart person and good at learning from books and online resources; I'm not going to jump into this blind. I really can't as the startup costs (while relatively low for a small business) are large enough to require financing, and banks like business plans. Anyway, I was wondering if people had any suggestions or experience with small scale pro brewing. Books, websites, people to talk to, are all needed. I'm looking at:
1) Business planning. I'll need to figure out predictions for the actual cost of brewing (right now, I externalize things like water and garbage as they're not really noticeable on the 5 gal scale and they're also part of my regular residential rent) and the likely price points for the products. If I largely self-distribute through a combined storefront / subscription system, I can make more per liter of beer, at the price of actually having to deal with transactions.
2) Regulatory planning. I've talked to some people at the ABC here in CA about this and have a handle on how to start, but I'm still dealing with zoning and health regulations. In particular, I think a tasting room that doubles as a pub (but only serves my beer, which I believe makes it easier to get a permit for) could be a decent anchor for the brewery. No food service planned (don't want to deal with that)- just beer on tap, cases to purchase, and probably a returnable growler filling service. That would be the anchor for the outreach and sales- the rest of sales would be subscriptions, but operating a bar is tricky.
3) Location planning. I'm in the SF Bay (currently living in SF), and cannot move too far. But I could go to Oakland or somewhere else nearby to save on rent. On the other hand, I'm looking to market my product to yuppies (or whatever they're called now), since they're the ones with the money. Anyone know any good resources for finding commercial rental properties in that region? Craigslist isn't all that helpful.
