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How big should my brewery be?

October 5, 2015 / 11 Comments / in Blog / by Nathan Pierce+

How big should my brewery be? How many square feet do I need for a brewery? How large of a facility should I get?
As the host of a podcast about how to start a brewery I have spoken with over 70 brewers, brewery owners, and
other experts in the craft beer industry. So I often hear this question from listeners around the world.

Of course you need to consider a number of factors to determine the size of your brewery. For example:

Size of your brew system

Your annual production capacity

Barrels of beer you plan to brew each year

Just the business model plays a major role in deciding how many square feet youll need for your brewery.

Brewpub serving only on-site consumption

Nanobrewery with taproom and no distribution

Production brewery with complete bottling, canning, and kegging lines

As you could imagine, there is no one-size- ts-all size requirement. Its a tough question to answer, but an
important answer to nd out.

If your brewery is too small, youll be crowded for space.

We did not anticipate the need for more cold storage or bigger brewing system, says Patty Elliot
[http://microbrewr.com/keep-striving-to-be-better/] from Pecan Street Brewing [http://pecanstreetbrewing.com] in
Johnson City, Texas.

Even though we have a big building, we dont have a large area for Sean [the brewer] to store kegs in and we only
have four serving tanks. So serving tanks have to get low enough that he could keg o , that it will t in the keg
storage area, so that he could brew another beer. So were constantly ghting the battle and were desperately
wanting to get more cold storage space.

And if your brewery is too large, you waste precious money on the startup cost for square footage that wont be
used.

Yet, with craft beers explosive growth that doesnt seem to be letting up anytime soon, youll likely be expanding
operations not long after opening.

When MicroBrewr founder, Joe Shelerud asked 61 brewers in late 2013, What do you wish you had known before
starting your brewery? nearly 20% of the responses were that they should have planned their expansion
[http://microbrewr.com/what-i-wish-id-known-before-starting-a-brewery/] from the start.

I would have built a larger infrastructure at the outset, says Brett Tate from Dust Bowl Brewing Company
[http://www.dustbowlbrewing.com] . Weve expanded the operation and reached capacity production three times
since we started brewing in 2009. Weve now maximized what we can t in the footprint of our current building
Our new site will, or course, have room to grow, so at least weve learned!

Space requirements for a brewery vary greatly

If you read the books about starting a brewery and online beer forums, you can nd magic formulas to tell you
how big your brewery should be.

For example:

1,000 square feet, per barrel of brewhouse running at capacity

1 to 1.5 square feet, per barrels produced, per year

JVNWs website has a lot of information and brochures [http://jvnw.com/beer/] with speci cations and resource
requirements. As a manufacturer of brewing equipment, they work with a lot of di erent breweries in a huge
variety of con gurations.

JVNWs sizing recommendations are:

Complete brewery: 0.5 to 1 square feet, per barrel of yearly capacity

Sacked malt storage: 0.15 to 0.25 square feet, per barrel of yearly capacity

Again, a number of factors will a ect the space requirements for your speci c brewery and con guration. For
example:

Size and number of vessels in the brewhouse

Size and number of fermentation vessels and bright tanks

How many batches you plan to do each week

Incidentally, JVNW says the average sta requirement is 0.75 sta per 1,000 barrels of yearly capacity. Whereas,
Lakewood Brewing [http://lakewoodbrewing.com] , the one who recommends 1,000 square feet per barrel of

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9/13/2017 How big should my brewery be? MicroBrewr

brewhouse, has 22 sta for about 10,000-15,000 barrel production [http://microbrewr.com/the-importance-of-

budgeting-for-working-capital/] . So about 1.76 sta for every 1,000 barrelsroughly double what JVNW
recommends.

So my takeaway is just that the stats vary greatly.

Space requirements for breweries on MicroBrewr Podcast

To get a handle on exactly what the square footage requirement is for a small craft brewery, MicroBrewr Podcast
listener, Akhilesh Pandey dug into the stats from the show notes.

Another podcast listener, Peter Stillmank from Stillmank Brewing Co. [http://www.stillmankbrewing.com] in Green
Bay, Wisconsin, asked for these stats to get a better picture of our discussions in MicroBrewr Podcast. At episode
41, I started asking for speci c statistics including: size of the brewhouse, number of vessels, annual capacity, and
square footage.

For this exercise, we were concerned only with how many square feet are required for a small craft brewery.

So Akhilesh dug into the numbers and plotted them into a spreadsheet. He compared each brewerys annual
capacity to its square footage, and calculated the square footage per barrel of yearly capacity.

What were the results?

Well, we looked at the data from 20 di erent breweries from all over the U.S. plus one 1 in Ireland. (We had to
leave out a few due to incomplete data.) Models include everything from a tiny nanobrewery in the basement of a
hotel, all the way up to a large production brewery with international distribution, and everything in between. Weve
spoken with nanobreweries, brewpubs, and production packaging breweries.

If we take the total square footage for all breweries and divide it by the total yearly capacity of all breweries, it
equals 0.8 square feet required per barrel of yearly capacity. This gives sort of an industry-wide e ciency, but it
doesnt really look at what each brewery is doing on an individual basis.

Craft beer is a young industry. Its home to a wide variety of players with varying levels of experience, knowledge,
and preferences. So the range of their space e ciency is extremely wide.

When we calculate the square footage per barrel of yearly capacity at each individual brewery, the maximum was 40
square feet, the minimum was 0.2 square feet, and the average (mean) was 4.6 square feet per barrel.

Square footage per barrel of yearly capacity at 20 craft breweries in the U.S.A. and Ireland:

Calculation method Square feet per yearly barrel production

capacity

Maximum 40.0

Minimum 0.2

Average (mean) 4.6

Median 1.6

STD Dev. with 99% con dence 2.16

Range 39.8

That seemed kind of high. I thought maybe the average was being skewed by outliers.

So I checked the median.The median is 1.6 square feet per barrel of yearly capacity.

Median is often used to calculate skewed data sets [https://statistics.laerd.com/statistical-guides/measures-central-

tendency-mean-mode-median.php] . It sort of cancels out those outliers like the nanobrewery that uses a whopping
40 square feet per barrel produced, and the brewpub/production brewery that somehow blasts out a full barrel of
beer for every 0.2 square feet they occupy.

Now, Im not a mathematician, I dont recall much from Statistics class. But Akhil has more insight to o er.

The average the way you have it there, he writes by email, is not the right method because it does not eliminate
the outlier.

Akhil looked at the standard deviation (I remember that term from Statistics class) and found that those few data
points that are just so far from the others, dont really help us. Theyre considered oddballs. By taking o the 3
outliers from the end, Akhil can get 99% con dence in his calculation.

With 99% con dence, we can guess that your brewery would need 2.16 square feet per barrel of yearly
capacity.

So there you have it

How much space do you need for your brewery in planning or for your next expansion brewery?

First gure out how many barrels of beer you plan to be able to produce per year, your total capacity.

Then gure on needing about 2.16 square feet per barrel of yearly capacity.

Another way of looking at it, says Peter, When you purchase your building, divide the square feet by 2.16 to gure
out what the buildings [annual production] capacity is. When you reach this [production level] it will be time to
move.

Special thanks to longtime MicroBrewr Podcast listeners, Peter Stillmank and Akhilesh Pandey for your help on
this post.

Image showing Blueprint by Will Scullin on ickr [https://www. ickr.com/photos/wscullin/] (CC BY 2.0
[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/] ) was modi ed from its orignal state.

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11
REPLIES

Dustin Hauck
October 14, 2015 at 7:43 am

Hi Nathan. This is a great article. You have some excellent data here that will help a lot of breweries in
planning. A question for you: When calculating square footage per barrel of yearly capacity, how many
brew cycles per week are in the calculation to determine yearly barrel capacity? When many small
breweries open, they may only be brewing a few times per week. Thats 2 per week x 50 weeks per year
= 100 sessions per year. As they grow, this will increase. They can reach a max. of 2+ batches per day, 7
days a week. 14 brews per week x 50 weeks = 700 sessions per year. Now that is a cranking brew house!
For a 15 BBL brew house, this could be 1,500 to 10,500 BBLs yearly production. That is a huge
di erence. This is why planning for expansion is critical. Using your 2.16 S.F. per yearly BBL production,
this 15 BBL brew house brewery could start with 3,240 S.F. minimum. But could need 22,680 S.F. at max.
production.

For comparison, of the almost 40 breweries we have worked on to date, our average S.F. per yearly BBL
production is 3.1. Albeit, with conservative production numbers. As production grows, I agree that 2.16
S.F. per yearly BBLs is a great planning number.

It is important for any new brewery to determine how may brew sessions they will do per week. And,
how that number will increase as demand for their product grows. And as you stated, your business
model (tap room, distribution, etc.) can have a large impact on how much space you need.

Speci c Mechanical has a great formula for calculating annual production and the number of tanks it will
take to get there.
http://speci cmechanical.com/products-services/brewery-systems/system-sizing

Another great article. Keep it up!

Cheers,
T. Dustin Hauck, Architect
Hauck Architecture

Reply

Nathan Pierce
October 17, 2015 at 10:44 am

Dustin, thanks for the kind words and for your contributing thoughts. As you said, annual
production capacity is a factor of the size of brewhouse and the number of batches per year.
Number of batches per year is limited by the quantity of fermenters available. That article you
linked looks pretty helpful for calculating that requirement. In basic planning, I gure maybe 2-
week fermentation cycles. So 6 fermentation tanks would allow 3 batches per week: brew one day,
bottle the next, take the weekends o . 10 fermentation tanks would allow 5 batches per week,
brewing every day, and dedicated sta bottling every day. All this is pretty simpli ed, assuming
that fermenters are the same size as the brewhouse, there is enough sta to package the beer as
fast as its being brewed, theres enough oor space to do the work, etc. To complicate matters
more If fermenters were twice the size of the brewhouse, two batches per day could ll one
fermenter, the sta could do multiple batches per day by working longer shifts or rotating shifts
around the clockvariables are endless! gahh This study is just to nd a basic calculation for early
planning purposes. phew haha Thanks for your comments!

Reply

Robert Long
March 15, 2016 at 1:23 am

Opening a brewery plant is not a matter of some days. It takes months for its proper installation. For
example, if we think of microbrewery oors, we always look for the best contractors available in market
to get the work done in a professional manner.

Reply

Xorge Alanis

http://microbrewr.com/how-big-should-my-brewery-be/ April 27, 2016 at 1:59 am 3/4

9/13/2017 How big should my brewery be? MicroBrewr
April 27, 2016 at 1:59 am

Amazing information and extremely critical when planning a brewery. I also believe that in addition to
project planning and optimizing start-up costs and future expansion, you need the right equipment to
provide your customers with a beer as was intended by the brewer.

If anyone would be interested in a future expansion or acquisition of a fully customizable brewery

system, please check us out at http://www.china-ximo.com

Reply

Ravi Jintendra Sanghvi

October 12, 2016 at 7:49 am

I must say it should be like Brutopia, Montreal. It was just a fantastic weekend last week with my friends
over there. I like their services, their beers and sandwiches. de nitely recommended.

Reply

Nathan Pierce
October 12, 2016 at 5:22 pm

Thanks, Ravi. Id love to visit Montreal some day!

Reply

Matt
February 7, 2017 at 6:16 am

Does the 2.16 number include tap room space?

Im assuming so since you seem to have normalized your data across all business types, but you know
what they say about assumptions
Also, are these numbers still viable?

Reply

Nathan Pierce
February 7, 2017 at 9:31 am

Matt, thanks for checking in. The numbers are based on survey respondents answers. For each
episode of MicroBrewr Podcast, I ask the guest from a brewery what their square footage is. You
can nd individual data points on the show notes for each episode, starting at episode 041.

Reply

Adrian
July 31, 2017 at 4:08 pm

Great article Nathan. Im also interested in an answer to Matts question. Do you know if
the brewpubs surveyed were including their seating space when quoting their square
footage?

Reply

Nathan Pierce
August 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm

Most of the square footage was reported as a one number; I dont know whether it
was seating space and production space. So for the 2 that did report separate
numbers for seating and production space, we erred on the safe side and left out
seating. That was episodes 041 and 070, which were 600 sq. ft. and 3,000 sq. ft.,
respectively.

This exercise is meant as a guide, it shows the average across a wide spectrum of
business models and brewery types. There are too many factors to give a one-size-
ts-all answer. Run your own numbers, do you own research, and let us know
what works for you.

Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

1. Startup Brewery - Break Even Analysis Template - ProjectionHub
April 20, 2016 at 11:28 am

[] is the rst important question that will determine how much it takes to breakeven. There is a great article by
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