Brewhouse Build - Outbuilding Conversion

[WishboneBrewery]

That all sounds bloody fantastic I'm well pleased for you

[orlando]

Fantastic Steve, you must feel like all your Xmases have come at once. Now let's hope all this enthusiasm from the French turn into regular orders. Shame about the tiny size of your brewery though

[barneey]

Good on you Steve, glad its gone well for you.

Now concentrate on keeping the repeat customers happy with a supply of beer or are you going for the "Westvleteren" approach?

Have you calculated the bottom line figures yet?

Cheers

C

BTW dont forget my few bottles

[orlando]

BTW dont forget my few bottles

Any chance this is a queue

[stevetk189]

Cheers boyo's! As far as figures go, difficult to calculate. It would be nice to be able to have around 2-3 months stock of core beers per brew just to cut the weekly/monthly brew days down. There's sooooo much more other stuff aside from making beer. I'm doing a regular range of ales plus I want to do seasonal specials plus a sort of Xtreme range of more, off the wall stuff. Just enjoying an orange and cardamom wheat beer, very nice. Earlier on I had a sample of my WIP Date and Jaggery amber ale hopped with Saaz and Nelson Sauvin, spicy, winey, full bodied but well attenuated to a nice dryness with a tad of date sweetness. Two days ago I'd have said the French weren't ready for such beers yet BUT after the feedback on my massively hopped Apollo APA yesterday, I think they're crying out for beer that tastes and smells of something. Time will tell.

Re the beer mails to you folks, there's a small list with a couple of online beer reviewers at the top but all of the above are on the list. It would be nice to consider exporting over to the UK I just dread the beurocracy that that will entail. It's been a mad 12 months so far with paperwork.

[Highlander]

Can't believe I've missed most of this. Its a cracking story. I love the look of the bottles and its great its great its gone down so well.
Can I ask is this a commercial venture? or is it a secondary income?
My beer is no way near good enough yet but the reason I ask, is that I have a similar setup and have had a few request's and often toyed with the idea, but wasn't sure if it was worth making it official.

[stevetk189]

Cheers Highlander, I've been working on the label design for ages (in between France's myriad hurdles when trying to start a small business). It's commercial, small scale - up to 10,000 HL or something silly. Bit of a sod was this year the Douanes (Customs) increased duty from 1,38 euro per %abv per 100l to 3,60 euro per %abv per 100l. Quite a hike and worse still, they now tax me on freebies used up for tastings AND my own personal consumption. This didn't apply (according to a different customs officers) last year. It seems the French authorities have spotted the rise in craft brewing here too and have jumped on the, "ooh let's have some of this in tax" band wagon.

Not to worry, it's still only a couple/few cents per bottle, I'm lucky it happened before I put my pricing out. Lot of older breweries now having to visibly increase their pricing. Bloody tax!

[floydmeddler]

Absolutely over the moon for you Steve. Your beers sound amazing. You are living the dream dude!!

[chivelegs]

Good work, that man! I'll forward your details to my mate in La Souteraine, get him to pick up a few bottles when he next comes over to visit.

[stevetk189]

Cheers boyos!

[crafty john]

Well done Steve, you're an inspiration

[froggi]

Jumping on the back slapping and applauding bandwagon, well done Steve.... Watched the thread of the build with interest and a certain amount of jealousy too... Well done doowd.... A credit to us all!!

[far9410]

Jumping on the back slapping and applauding bandwagon, well done Steve.... Watched the thread of the build with interest and a certain amount of jealousy too... Well done doowd.... A credit to us all!!

+1. I envy you both for where you live and what you're doing, keep it going!

[stevetk189]

Kind words guy but please, don't envy. It's really tough here, seriously tough. It's not just the language barrier, as reasonable as my French is getting these days, the complicated stuff is still really, crushingly (at times) hard. The land runs on narrow minded, short sighted beuorcracy and common sense has no place with the beurocrats. You come away from meetings 98% certain the person you just dealt with didn't fully understand their role or system. I've had conflicting information from Customs officers who no doubt share the same office at their HQ. When asked questions or information is challenged you get a shrug in response and a sort of, "how dare you question me." look.

In a nutshell there are just as many downs as there are ups, every single day. Most days, there are more downs. C'est la vie as they say. The grass is never greener on the other side and in fact the only thing that is ever on the other side, is the other side.

Now I need to figure out a 5 barrel brewery, FVs and conditioning tanks before I've even started using this build fully in anger... Aarghhhhhhhhhhh!

[Matt12398]

Steve, that looks a bit like my drum kit in the background. Is that a Roland?

A drumming, commerical brewer. You are like my idol.