legal position of brew your own in my premises

[e--brewer]

Hi All
A few belly rumbling ideas ..
I bought a couple of smallish commercial units in Fife all of which have good drainage and might with planning consent make a decent brewing unit .

I wonder if anyone can tell me what the legal position is regarding someone who has a commercial property and a brewing setup . Set up so that members of the public come along brew there own beers make all the mess etc at my place coming back to collect the fermented beer later . I saw a place like this in Canada years ago and stewart brewing runs something similar in Edinburgh .The property owner making a charge for use of kit electric etc and not for beer?
Do you think this model might work as a P/t biz or perhaps forming a brewing club or similar and leasing the property to the club for its members to use .

Any one got any ideas ?

thx

[oz11]

clicky

It was tried in London nearly 20 years ago..see above. I joined and brewed there several times over 12 months or so before it disappeared. From there it was a slippery slope.....

[e--brewer]

Thanks Oz11

That's the thing I had in mind ..

So if the guy in London managed it ,shouldn't be against uk laws.

I wonder if there would be enough interest to make it work P/t

[oz11]

I do remember they were strict on certain things.... you had to add your own extract and grains (it wasn't a full mash set up) to the hot liquor which was ready when you arrived. You had to pitch the yeast yourself. And packaging (bottles/plastic kegs) had to be done by your own hands. The staff were always on hand to advise and watch if necessary though.

Two of my mates and I were really into it and gutted when it closed, but there didn't really seem to be an awful lot of interest at the time though...maybe ahead of its time?

[e--brewer]

I wondered if the cost of beer at around £3 a pint would make it more off a practical option .

I wondered if brews of around 80 pints might be practical .

Maybe you could also offer facility to do kit beers and wines etc

[Belter]

I wondered if the cost of beer at around £3 a pint would make it more off a practical option .

I wondered if brews of around 80 pints might be practical .

Maybe you could also offer facility to do kit beers and wines etc

I think at £3 a pint people would run a mile? I could be wrong but I know I would.

[oz11]

In '96 the price of a pint in a pub was probably £1.60 - £1.70 and even at around 40p per pint the brew on premises didn't seem to take off.

[killer]

I wondered if the cost of beer at around £3 a pint would make it more off a practical option .

I wondered if brews of around 80 pints might be practical .

Maybe you could also offer facility to do kit beers and wines etc

I think at £3 a pint people would run a mile? I could be wrong but I know I would.

I presumed he meant the cost of Beer at 3 quid a pint in pubs might make it viable because he would be cheaper.... If not 3 quid is what a lot of people already pay for good beers in a pub.

This system was in operation in Lyon quite recently actually. You book, turn up, brew (extract + hops + yeast) from a list of recipes and go home. It's done in groups of 5 or so though that means five brews - so couples can come and count as "1" brewer as they only use one boiler. You pay as a function of the quantity you brew - so some people brew 10L or 15L or 20L - though they are all on the same 29L boilers over the same time period. You then come back 4 weeks later and collect your bottled beer. Not sure if it's still up and running or not...

[e--brewer]

HI Killer
Yes I did mean £3 a pint in pubs .

The lyon model sounds like the idea I had in mind although five people doing one brew seems like a lot o hassle for the biz owner unless they were charging appropriately Or were able to make secondary sales to the extra brewers.

On the other hand the word o mouth advertising from batches of 5 brewers might well be an advantage.

I was thinking that this idea might work as a P/t thing maybe open Sat or Sundays with perhaps an Evening mid week.

[Jocky]

London Beer Lab does this - they have several Braumeister systems http://londonbeerlab.com/our-workshops/

But it's £150 to brew 20l of beer.

[Sean P]

I work in Ealing and used Mr Bung in acton a few times . We did it as group from work an you ended up with about 20 bottles each The set up was good with recipe books for the common beers, a mill to crush your grain and a choice of hops. It was a double fronted shop on the high street and was just too specialist to make it viable

[boingy]

I think you can sort the legal position but I'm not sure you can make it pay. How much could you charge on top of the ingredients and the bottles/polypin? You might find you make more money from selling coffee and bacon butties during the boil.
Repeat business might be hard to find. The really keen ones will come twice then be off brewing on their own, and probably encourage their friends to do the same.

Actually, you might end up with your main business being supplying ingredients to folks who started with you then want to continue at home. But that could be a viable business model, depending upon your overheads and your local competition.

[killer]

HI Killer
Yes I did mean £3 a pint in pubs .

The lyon model sounds like the idea I had in mind although five people doing one brew seems like a lot o hassle for the biz owner unless they were charging appropriately Or were able to make secondary sales to the extra brewers.

On the other hand the word o mouth advertising from batches of 5 brewers might well be an advantage.

I was thinking that this idea might work as a P/t thing maybe open Sat or Sundays with perhaps an Evening mid week.

yes what I meant was there were 5 boilers - but maybe 7 people total... so maybe 5 boilers x 15L/ boiler x 3 bottles/L x 1 euro a bottle = 210 euro.

I suspect that this model may work well in Lyon as craft beer is only taking off and there is little competition and certainly not the brewing scene you have in the UK.

[mixbrewery]

I used to own/run on of the BIY places in Watford.
Mix Brewery

HMRC ruling was that the brewers had to belong to a club and pay a membership.
They obviously had to do the actual brewing and the bottling/kegging when fermentation was done.
This way you had control of the brewer as they had to sign the membership form agreeing it was for home/personal consumption.

All the units ran extract based recipes purely due to the time required to brew, about 2hours compared to 5 for a all-grain brew.
Our unit, like Mr Bungs, had prime retail frontage and we were located in Watford town centre.
We even had 4 bus stops outside in the street!

If you are thinking of a similar setup on a remote industrial unit then think again.
At 1996 prices we spent nearly £2000 on advertising in the first year and with all that passing trade we still went bust in under 2 years

Maybe if you have a club based system where people investment in the kit as well it may work but you will never make enough money to take a salary to provide a basic living.

You could use the kit to brew and sell but you then need to be HMRC registered as a brewer.
Ingredients should kept separate etc. and obviously proper records keep and excise duty paid on any sales.
Have read the Beer Duty 226 document from HMRC - all about producing beer and excise duty, great bedtime reading

Sorry to p155 on your fire but I don't believe this business model suits the UK demographics.
Brewers World were the first to setup and had big plans to start a chain of franchise breweries, they were the first to go down the pan!
Then me and followed by Mr Bungs. There were a couple of other smaller BIY units at the same time but none survived more than a few years.

[e--brewer]

Thanks for your info .
Cant see me wanting to sell beer .
Quite like the idea of the brewers club although I suspect that if this were the case the brewlength would have to be high to entice away from there own setups.
None of the three properties would lend themselves to having a commercial grade kitchen installed cheaply to allow selling bacon rolls etc but all three I imagine could easily be modified at modest cost to a wee brewery .