Ive always been a keen home brewer and recently have been thinking about brewing as a change in career/ fallback skill to have. This was heightened after speaking to my grandad and learning that my great, great grandad owned a brewery and some of the money from its sale is still in the family. I love my ale and am aware how many great small breweries are out there, and so comes my question, has the boat long sailed and the ale market is now saturated, or is there still room for a new brewery to make a name for itself and more importantly earn a living from?

apologies for posting in the Bike forum!

A friend of mine runs a small brewery called Grey Trees brewery, as he said, if your make a good ale, it will sell.
What I would say is don’t go too big too quick. Make a couple of brews, get a few local shops and free houses to guest ale it and hope for the best.
Hope it all goes well for you. It’s nice to have a change from mega brews.

Exactly what my neighbour did. He was a hobby brewer for years then when he got made redundant he went for it full time. Set up in his garage. Always seems to be working but enjoying it and doing well.

He works with another small brewery occasionally who are a bit more marketing savvy and are doing really well, expanded into bigger premises. I reckon there’s space for a lifestyle business or a proper brewery depending on what you want to do and how hard you want to work at it.

I wouldnt bother .
Too many pubs closing , too many breweries opening.
There is also presssure to reduce/remove PBD which will destroy hundreds of start ups.
All raw ingrediants have gone up this year, its also harder to get on without food safety accreditation.
E-casks and Close Bros make expansion limitless now , but that is a level playing feild
Craft Keg is the margin line, but that is very London-centric , and requires greater cap ex, cost of sale higher due to importer one trip kegs post Brexit

If it were my cash I would be looking at a craft home brew bar.
Limited space , make it a venue people will queue to enter , then stay once they are in. brew some , swap some , stock some different beers , craft keg , Lagers , Ciders etc , comfy seats , wood burners , patio.
Just need a venue and a tiny brew kit

If you make good beer it will sell, but you don’t make much margin at all on a per pint basis, maybe 20p per pint or something of that order. A few guys where I work recently took VS and early redundancy and all set up. But all went into it as a hobby and to indulge in their passion rather than to make any serious money and were just aiming to cover costs and hopefully earn a bit of extra beer money. A few of them have been quite successful and won awards, so a bit more than just keen amateurs peddaling average beer, but they’re still not making much money – not enough to live on.

Apparently it’s an extremely saturated market that has exploded in recent years. There also seems to be huge hurdles in your way. I asked the landlord of my local who usually has a good 4 or 5 guest ales on at any time (though depressing his best selling beer is still Carling!) if he would put some of their beers on. But it seems that most pubs attached to bigger chains/companies have a scheme that you have to buy into to get yourself onto their approved list and if you’re a small micro brewery you’re unlikely to earn the fee back. So you’re limited which pubs you can get your beer on.

I’d look into it carefully if you intend to earn a living from it.

People will always need beer.

But all went into it as a hobby and to indulge in their passion rather than to make any serious money and were just aiming to cover costs and hopefully earn a bit of extra beer money.

This appears to be the case in many circumstances (anecdotally anyway). If you sit and do a rough business plan and look at what all your costs would be, and therefore what your profits might look like, I’d imagine that it won’t be particularly favourable as a career change.

its way more than 20p per pint gross margin

Well even pubs and the big brewing companies don’t make much, if anything, out of beer. The beer is just something to get you into their pubs so they can sell you overpriced crappy food. Seems people are much happier to pay for overpriced crap food rather than slightly more expensive decent beer.

my local charges £3.30 for their craft beers. I think its a steal for that price, but we’ve had about 4 changes of landlord over the last 5 or 6 years as they can never make any money. Luckily the current landlord has his own haulage business so is running the pub for the pure fun and joy of it and he’s doing a cracking job. i’d happily pay another 50p or so a pint to keep a decent landlord on who knows how to keep beer and run a good pub.

If it’s £25 production cost inc tax to make a 72 pint cask how do you get this 20p per pint profit figure at £4 per pint retail?

its way more than 20p per pint gross margin

Whichever way you cut it, its pence not pounds per pint. It’s not gross margin that ends up in your pocket at the end of the day.

btw , are you really going to argue with someone who has been brewing for ‘microbreweries’ since the 80’s ?

Most small local ale type breweries are making £50 per cask profit. Big boys make significantly more.

Have a look at the local beer thread.

So much competition, you’ll need to be excellent to succeed.

Friend runs a modestly successful Wiltshire brewery. Right now, it’s allowing him and his family and good life, but with hard work. For him to get to the next level, in terms of size, distribution etc, would involve a massive financial leap.

So, in short, good luck, but it won’t be easy. At all.

It’s booming around my neck of the woods, lots of independent small bars springing up, you need a good product and you’ll have to market it with lots of social networking, visit bars, get chatting to the owners etc. But I wouldn’t call the market saturated, hipsters are always hunting out the latest niche beer or bar.

Maybe you’ll have to live with breaking even for a while whilst you build brand reputation, but that’s the same for any business.

£4 per pint? the streets are obviously paved with gold down south!!. You’re looking at £3.30 ish up this way per pint. Don’t think i’ve ever paid more than £3.50 for a pint round here.

hipsters are always hunting out the latest niche beer or bar.

I thought they’ve all moved onto gin?

People will always need beer.

Beer is, after all, God’s way of telling us he loves us. 😀

I always find it odd that people are so tight about beer prices when it’s a handmade local product made with passion, and supports local jobs. Most people seem to be prepared to pay the extra for local meat from a reputable butcher but not beer. I own a few different pubs that vary in type of clientele, but we actively avoid people like wobbliscott who want everything for nothing, and prefer quantity to quality. You want to target the people who will pay a good price for one pint rather than those who have to budget for six.

I thought they’ve all moved onto gin?

Rum is up next.

A fleeting, fickle market.
An excellent, established local beer will sell well, however. Eg Summer Lightning.

Most people seem to be prepared to pay the extra for local meat from a reputable butcher but not beer.

I don’t think most people are, hence the popularity of supermarkets churning out cheap shite meat and the decline in local butchers. Just the exact same as they have done to beer and pubs IMO.

Fair point Km. I see a few different reactions to prices by location. Devon, Bath, Gloucestershire. I live in South London and have a great beer pub opposite. £6 pint. I think that’s fine for proper craft beer, people wouldn’t blink at paying that for a large glass of NZ Sauvignon blanc.

Different demographics though, personally I’d rather have four or five pints of interesting beer, but when I was younger I’d rather have ten pints of cooking lager for the same money.

Yeah I totally understand younger drinkers wanting prices they can get 10 pints for but it’s the older drinkers that can be the price whingers. What’s wrong with 6 pints of brilliant craft beer for £30? Sounds like a great Saturday night to me but some seem to think it’s daylight robbery.

Craft beer drinkers are almost as tight as cyclists. Probably a fair bit of overlap between them…

I don’t think most people are, hence the popularity of supermarkets churning out cheap shite meat and the decline in local butchers. Just the exact same as they have done to beer and pubs IMO.

Two good butchers in my locale and a number of pubs and bars selling a huge variety of real ales from small producers. Give it a go teenrat, you never know.

Listen to singletrackmind.

A couple of friends of mine opened a brewery 2 years ago in a railway arch in SE london. Every time I go there I see another brewing vessel and a new member of staff. They have a brewery tap which has gone from friday and Saturday nights to open all week. One of them gave up the day job to brew full time instead of just brewing at the weekend.
They seem to be doing really well but the tap room is probably what makes it more successful as that’s no distribution costs and the profit is all yours (though you need a manager and bar staff)
Beer is sold mostly in london and I guess most of it within a couple of miles.
Lots of hard work but done right it can obviously be an earner.

Listen to singletrackmind.

This, he knows what he’s talking about. 🙂

The only caveat to my previous post is that if you really understand marketing, you may have a chance, it is after all a marketing led business. But bear in mind that as result you end up competing against some very smart marketers. The impression I get is singletrackmind knows brewing inside out, produces a quality product but the marketing is predominately someone else’s job and I imagine to his frustration some companies manage to somehow fashion a silk purse out of a pig’s ear through marketing. If I have misinterpreted him, I apologise in advance.

This is similar to my plan after looking for a career change.
Am a solid homebrewer. Have some experience in the food/drink industry but currently working as an IT consultant in the third sector.

Applying to go to Heriot Watt uni in September to do the post grad brewing and distilling course.

Aim is to then work for a commercial brewery for 2-3 years to learn the trade at a commercial level while also developing my recipes. Then set up my own small brewery/tap room.

The distilling is interesting too, hope to learn more on the course as it would allow me to make gins etc for diversification.

There’s a beer in my local craft ale establishment which sells for £9 a pint!

#onlyinsouthville 😀

Men under increasing pressure to have a craft ale brewery

🙂

Around my way decent blonde ‘session’ ales go for £3 to £4 a pint, and more speciality ones around a fiver, sometimes more seems reasonable to me.

I’d guess (and I’m not a brewer) you’d need a standard session blonde of some sort as the core product and also do limited runs of more speciality beers.

One thing to consider – based on watching my neighbour head into work pretty much every day of the week. Is that beer doesn’t honour weekends, when it needs something to be done to it, it needs doing, whether it’s Sunday, Christmas day or hangover day!

I know someone who can vouch for that, toby1…!

Mefty . I dont know if you know me or not, but thats bob on.

I am more than willing to help with the numbers , pitfalls, what works and what doesn’t.

How to grow a brewing business ,and how not too.

I have our company input prices so you dont have to ‘guess’ on your XL spreadsheet for the bank manager .

We aim to sell for 90p a pint average , now before you go on about landlords making huge profits , they dont. They have all the expenses with rates, rents , wages , utilities etc . No one will drink in a cold pub . Cost per pint varies hugely but as a pointer its less than 40p at our duty level.

I have said what I would do, I wont go down that road as I spend enough time at work ( I go in every day ) its not 9-5 but sometimes it can be anytime between 8am and 8pm sun -sun .and i am miserable sod and no -one would want to come in my pub and have me ask if they put on their sisters jeans as theirs were in the wash , and did they fall over on the way and rip the jeans across both knees

Mefty . I dont know if you know me or not, but thats bob on.

Only through your posts on here, and the generous advice you often give on beer threads, glad I didn’t get it wrong and cause offence. Best of luck in what you do, it is a noble trade.

Applying to go to Heriot Watt uni in September to do the post grad brewing and distilling course.

I did a couple of years of an BSc in brewing an distilling, jacked in the end as I was too skint and couldn’t see a decent career outside of “factory production”. That was when craft beer wasn’t cool.

Very hard degree is that.