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Monday, May 27, 2013

Fascinating Concept: Leasing a Nanobrewery

By far the biggest barrier to the aspiring brewer is cost.  Buildings and equipment can quickly tot up to the seven figures.  Thus did emerge the gypsy and nano brewer, folk who figured out a way to bring small amounts of beer to the market without the massive up-front cost.  But even nano systems aren't cheap--and the goal of any serious brewer is to dump the incredibly labor-intensive nano system as soon as she can raise funding for a bigger one.  The answer?  Lease a nano
You want to start your brewery now. You know you'll only be a nano-brewery for 1 to 2 years. You want to reserve your capital for purchasing your future "big" brewery. Lease costs can be expensed in the current tax year and not depreciated over time.* Save your capital and Lease A Nano!

Minimum one-year lease. $1,275 per month. Proof of insurance required.
It's a fascinating idea.  Even though the total cost for the year lease isn't nuthin ($15k), you'd be brewing with a far smaller initial investment.  Even if the whole thing was a debacle--the beer didn't turn out like you'd hoped, selling the beer was harder than you expected, and you found that brewing is hard, repetitive, sweaty work--you probably wouldn't lose your house in the process.

I'm not really sure how much more beer Portland can absorb, but the company is willing to ship it anywhere on the west coast, Idaho, or Nevada.  It'll be interesting to see whether ideas like this have a future.

4 comments:

  1. I like this idea, as well as the co-op brewing space, and contract brewing. Any idea that gets me closer to brewing for more people is cool!

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  2. I wonder if someday the brewing industry will be like the semiconductor industry, where only a few semiconductor firms build their own chips and the rest contract their manufacturing out to foundries that have gone into business specifically for contract manufacturing of semiconductors.

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  3. I'm also not sure how much more beer Portland can absorb. This is an idea whose time was 10 years ago, when our brewery count was sane.

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  4. Wonder if this is from Atomic Ales? I visited them a couple of years ago in Richland and think they had a 2 or 3 bbl system.

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