Ah, it's Spring and the smell of new malt is in the air. there is a lot happening all over the place this weekend, Kentucky Derby, Beer fests, Strawberry Festival in Roanoke. I hear the Chili cookoff has been postponed though. Check before you go, please.
2 new breweries in the Roanoke area will have their grand opening this weekend.
Since there was a change in the law that took effect 1 July 2012, there has been an explosion of new breweries in Virginia. This law allowed for breweries to have tastings and to sell consumer packages of beer at the brewery. Previously, beer could only be sold with a tiered licensing of sales of food. The less food sold, as compared to alcohol, the more expensive the license.
With the new law, a brewery could sell glasses of beer, take out containers growlers, or normal packages of beer as might be found in a grocery such as 12- 22 oz bottles or cans. Kegs require a separate license. The importance of this is that it opens a new revenue stream for breweries, allowing a new business model. This revenue stream is immediate and allows the brewery to collect the fee, or discount the beverage, that the distributor would collect, which is normally around 25-30% of the cost to the retailer. It also allows the brewery to act as the retailer. This is a boon to the brewery, some are opening that only rely on beer sales at the brewery with no thought to distribution outside the brewery. This type of establishment is called a tasting room. It distinguishes from a pub or bar, which would be expected to provide food.
Theres a good story as to how this change came about but, Ill save it for a later day.
The lack of a kitchen means much less cost and a change in the risk level as well as a significant decrease in regulatory pressure and costs. A boon for food truck people. Food trucks are now a staple at breweries with the food truck people doing what they do best and the brewers focusing on the beer.
A feature of this type of outlet is that outside food is generally welcomed and encouraged. Some of the tasting rooms will have delivery menus. If you are not sure, call them or check their facebook page but, all the breweries in the Roanoke area encourage outside food. Please note that The River Co. and Bull and Bones are BrewPubs and DO NOT allow outside food.
Enough of the housekeeping, now onto the fun.
Chaos Mountain Brewing 3135 Dillons Mill Road, Callaway, Virginia 24067 (Special note here- be careful using your GPS, one of the routes the GPS will select is essentially a cowpath going over the mountain. Make sure you select real roads, from 220 make sure you use Bethlehem, from 221 or the BRP use Callaway, Gap Gate, Bethany and Dugspur ). The Brewery is out in the country.
Head Brewer: Will Landry Will is a long time homebrewer with a family history of publicans in the U.K. thats United Kingdom, not U. of Kentucky. Hes a graduate of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas. He teamed up with Joe Hallock who owned a manufacturing building in Callaway but dreamed of a brewery.
Chaos Mountain has 2 brewing systems, a 30 bbl that will be their production system and produce for distribution and a 7 bbl system that is used as a recipe pilot and brews for the tasting room only or very limited distribution.
The had a very limited opening last week and hours this week but, their Grand Opening is this Saturday starting at noon, open to the public. Starts at noon. I will be there about when they open. Say hello if you come out.
https://www.facebook.com/events/438443682957188/
BBQ, and beer, good combination.
https://www.facebook.com/ChaosMountainBrewing
Soaring Ridge Craft Brewers 523 Shenandoah Avenue, Roanoke, VA 24016
In downtown Roanoke, theyve moved into the old Flowers Bakery Building. Its a nice spot, lots of garage doors type setup and lots of space for bands and tailgate games, they already have cornhole setup and encourage you to bring toys and food.
Head Brewer- Sean Osborne. Sean has an interesting history. He was an avid homebrewer. A few years ago, the owner of a local restaurant got tired of hearing Sean pester him about adding a brewery to his bar. One day, the owner told Sean to Put up or Shut up. So, Sean quit his job and became a commercial brewer. The restaurant no longer exists but they got all the brewing gear and did a soft opening for the brewery last weekend.
The beer is quite good and there is a range of styles available so no one is left out. Sean has a 5 bbl brewing system and has been using it for years so, he can very easily swap in seasonals. Bring your growler, their glass guy goofed and didnt order theirs, they will fill from other places, like most in VA will do.
Stop by for a pint or 2, the weather is really nice and this place is setup to take advantage of it.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Soaring-Ridge-Craft-Brewers/1400415976896769
Comments
Very nice, egbert!
Coming down to ROA on June 8th to go on a local brewery tour with a couple of friends. Glad to see some others joining in on the brewery boom. I believe Blacksburg could be okay with a second microbrewery, maybe something downtown. Not sure if you've ever been to Bull City in Durham, but they have a cool concept that could transpose to Blacksburg easily.
I wish there were more breweries in Blacksburg as well. I would think they
would do pretty well.
There's a beer fest in Salem on the 7th and it's normally a good one. check that out.
If you do come into town, when we get closer to the day, let me know and I'll see what I can do to grease some wheels and get contacts.
Is that Beertopia? I believe its at the Salem Redsox ballpark.
Yes, that's it.
I'll be there for that one.
http://biglickbeertopia.org/
In case anyone was interested.
Yeah. In the beer festivals thread.
ugh sorry....Joe can delete my previous comment.
Ah, didn't mean it to come across like that. Multitasking. Thanks for keeping an eye out and adding to the discussion.
I'm coming down for this one!
Thank you for giving us all of this information! I haven't been able to keep up on all of the new breweries since that wonderful law was passed in 2012.
How much traffic does Soaring Ridge get? A 5 barrel system is pretty small. Or is he just brewing all the time?
He brews all the time. Lots of fermeters. And lots of space for more.
He gets enough traffic so that the beer stays quite fresh. He's got an advantage where he sends the beer from the fermenter to the brite tank and serves from the brite tank. No transferring from there to keg. Saves lots of time and money that way.
Excellent question BTW.
That's awesome! You don't hear about places serving out of the brite tank very often. I will definitely have to check them out sometime.
And thank you, I know a little about micro-brewing after my parents looked into establishing their own (but weren't ready for the risk).
I heartily welcome this development. Seems like every month a new brewery opens in Richmond.
Yes, and the law was instrumental in allow the guys to work.
In Roanoke, there is scheduled 3 breweries to open this year. the 2 mentioned here and Big Lick Brewing is scheduled to open doors early summer.
I know of 2 others that are in planning stages and another changing their business model to take advantage of the opportunity. Can't talk about them yet.
If you guys get a sniff on a name or person that is opening one or has news, let me know, I'll give them a call and get the whole story.
Thanks.
After our Shamrock the Block festival got too swamped back in March, we took refuge here and spent the rest of the day indulging in excellent brews
http://www.isleybrewingcompany.com/
I still need to try Isley, but out of the Richmond breweries I've tried my favorite so far is Strangeways Brewing. They have several solid Belgian beers with a few other styles for variety. They also will infuse their beers with various things like fruits and even rose petals in their kegs. Plus they have a pretty cool atmosphere.
I like Strangeways as well.
We use a Randall for our infusions. This weekend in Roanoke is the Strawberry Fest and Chilli cookoff so, we are infusing our Munich Dunkel with strawberries and serrano peppers.
I have not been there. Unusual for me to say.
That's not far from Hardywood.
Thanks buddy. This topic makes me thirsty.
I don't think I've said it yet, but thanks Egbert for a great feature. I love reading about this stuff. I'm an occasional home brewer myself. Nothing fancy, but I love to hear about people who are doing good work in the craft.
Agreed. This is the kind of post that is awesome to get us through the summer. On a somewhat related note, man I wish I could buy Maroon Effect Ale from Bull and Bones in a 6 pack. God I love that stuff.
I think you can get it to go by the growler. Not sure if I remember correctly.
That is correct. Maroon Effect Ale is my go-to beer at Bull & Bones. A buddy of mine picked up a growler the last time we were there.
Ah, a beer in need is a beer indeed.
Thank you, sir.
Thinking about hiking the section of the AT near Flying Mouse in Troutville tomorrow, stopping in to try them out, they'll have a food truck tomorrow. On my way out I may stop by Soaring Ridge as well. I'm liking the future of Roanoke.
That's one reason why they located there. Frank is trying to get permission to open one of the covered buildings he has on site as a through hikers shelter/pavilion but so far he has met with some pretty stiff resistance from the county. He's going to try again later after they've been there a little longer to establish themselves as responsible.
They have a nice outside beer garden type area. Also, they sell the least expensive stainless steel insulated growlers I have seen.
Nice, all of that sounds great! I might pick up on of their growlers then, I've been meaning to get one.
I've never heard of a craft brewery making it's bones on tasting room sales. I find it hard to believe that the change in serving law suddenly made certain breweries financially viable.
I know of 1 brewery starting from scratch that has this business plan entirely dependent on counter sales 100%. Their distributor, whom I happened to be talking to last night, exists only for them to legally have beer at festivals.
I know of another brewery that ran profitably on 95% counter sales and only delivered about 15 kegs a month to other bars, no packaging for retail at all.
I know a 3rd that is altering their business plan to rely on this for 95% of it's revenue in.
I myself have run the numbers for a different brewery in setup stages and the numbers work out.
The very large advantage is that packaging- bottles, cans, etc, cost more than the beer and all other costs with the single exception of the Capitol cost of the equipment to brew.
Without having to package and keep up with demand, your equipment footprint is much smaller, requiring less rent, your brew system can have a smaller capacity- less Capitol purchase cost, you don't need to keg- significantly less Capitol cost and loss (keg loss is normally figured at about 5-7% a year minimum), significantly more revenue per glass.
Let's talk about that for a second. For every bottle of beer sold at a store, the brewery gets about 60%. I sell to the distributor, they add 30%, they sell to the store who adds about 20-30%. A little over 50% of what I get goes directly to paying for packaging. So, roughly mind you, if a 6 pack goes for $10 at the grocery then the brewery sees @ $3.00 after packaging costs.
6x12= 72 oz at $3.00.
If I sell a pint at my brewery for $4.00 I see that entire $4.
4.5 x 16= 72 at $18.
True, I have to pay a waitress and have some glassware. But let's say I pay a waitress 20% of my sales and I buy $500 worth of glassware and cleaning stuff totaling about 25% of sales.
That's still almost $13 per 6 pack equivalent coming to the brewery vice $3.00.
That's pretty close to the way it works out.
If a bar can make a profit selling beer they buy from a distributor buying from brewery, why is it difficult to see the brewery making a living selling the beer direct, for the same price?
Let me break convention a bit and reply to my post to bring up another point.
Kegs. Bring them back. The $30 deposit is not a purchase price, it's the legally mandated deposit fee. We cannot charge more than $30 for the deposit. The retailer doesn't lose it, the distributor doesn't lose it, the brewery loses it when they don't return. Inexpensive kegs now are about $150 and rising. I haven't looked in about 6 months, they might be more now, plus shipping.
A small brewery might have a keg fleet of 600-700 kegs or more. They get stolen regularly. I had a brewer friend that didn't audit his distributors for his kegs. I convinced him to do so because he was constantly begging them to bring back empties.
His audit showed he could not locate 261 kegs. That's in 4 years he lost +30% of his keg fleet valued at $39,000.
Think about that when you consider just the cost of buying kegs at startup. For the cost of the kegs alone you can purchase a small turnkey brew system and all the fermenters and serving tanks you need to do a craft brewery with tasting room only.
Instead of opening a new thread, I'll keep expanding here because it's not football related.
Small brewer economics.
Let's say I gat a small 5 bbl brew system and brew 2-3 times a week. Call it 140 brew days per year.
That's 700 bbl of beer per year. 32 gallon per bbl, 16 pints per gallon gets us-
358,400 pints per year. Say $3 per pint = $1M+
6800 pints per week too many to sell you say?
Then half that number and set your plan accordingly. You can make a living on that.