Throughout the U.S., demand for better beer has skyrocketed. To meet this demand, many new breweries have started popping up all over the country. These full-scale, micro, and even nano breweries make delicious beer that caters to this growing market. If you’ve ever thought about opening a brewery, you’ll be glad to hear that building a brewery isn’t as hard as you might have thought.

The Main Consideration for Brewery Construction: Brewing Volume

When deciding to build a brewery, one of the first questions you’ll have to answer is how much beer do you want to brew? Investing in too big of a brewery means needing greater capital upfront and higher overhead. A smaller brewery can keep costs low, but also means you might not be able to brew enough beer to satisfy your customers. When answering this question, you’ll need to think of production in terms of beer barrels (BBL).

Understanding Beer Barrels (BBL)

A beer barrel equals 31 U.S. gallons. The size of your brewery will be determined by how many beer barrels it can produce. Generally speaking, a microbrewery is a facility that makes less than 15,000 barrels of beer each year. Determining how many barrels you’ll want to be able to produce will depend on many factors as well as your business plan. Having room to expand will give you options in the future.

Common Microbrewery and Brewery Sizes

Brewery and microbreweries come in many different shapes and sizes. If your brewery will be retail only, you can often get by with only 500 square feet of space. For more of a production facility, you’ll want to have at least 3,000 square feet to work with. You’ll have to add additional square footage to support a bar and any office or storage areas you may want in your brewery.

Component Areas of a Brewery

Once you’ve decided how many beer barrels you’ll want to produce each year, you’ll need to decide how to layout the space. Always remember to save some room for expansion.

The Brewing Space

The brewing space is the heart of your operation. Make sure that you lay out components well because you’ll have to live with these decisions for a long time. Cramming too many components in too little space can make production difficult or unsafe to work in.

Yeast Lab

Microbiology isn’t easy, but having the right setup helps. For many microbreweries, the ability to culture and develop your own yeast is not just economical, it can be what makes your beer truly special. Yeast labs can often be squeezed into 100 square foot sections if needed, but make sure you have room for a work area, lab equipment, and refrigerator/freezer equipment.

Brewing Area

The brewing area is where the raw ingredients, including the malt, are milled and prepared for brewing. You will need room for a boiler system to heat the water and steam used during the brewing process.

Fermentation Area

After brewing, you’ll need space for the magic to happen. Fermentation is what turns the hot grain into delicious beer, but it takes time. Depending on how many, and what size fermentation tanks you’ll have will determine the amount of space needed. You’ll want to make sure you still have room to work and sanitize the equipment between batches too.

Bottling/Kegging Area

This is where your business goals will make a great determination on the size building you need. If you want to be able to bottle, keg, and store finished product, you’ll need a lot of space. If you plan on running more of a retail-only operation, you can make do with much less space.

Storage Areas

Keeping your production running smoothly also requires proper storage. You’ll need dry storage space for grain and malt as well as cold storage space. Barrels of beer will need to be stored somewhere too. Keep in mind you’ll have to move a lot of the product around, often with a forklift. High ceilings and clear paths to move around are key.

Shipping Dock

The final part of your production operation is the shipping dock. You will want to have a dedicated area and space to both receive orders and ship out finished product. Planning this out well will help keep your operation running smoothly as your business grows.

Retail Space

Many microbreweries support the costs of operation with a retail space. Retail spaces not only help bring in more money but are a great way to get direct feedback from your loyal customers. Not to mention, they’re fun too!

Serving Bar

How many people will you want to be able to serve at the bar at a given time? The size of the bar will often set the size for the rest of the retail space.

Tasting/Dining Area

Surrounded by the bar will be the tasting and dining area. Using outdoor seating is a great way to expand this area without adding too much cost.

Administrative Offices

Finally administrative offices. You’ll want to have a space for you and your team to work when you are not in the production area or sitting at the bar. Plan your offices carefully so you have options as you grow.

Brewery Utility Requirements

One of the plus sides of building a new building for your brewery is being able to ensure that all of the proper utilities are in place. When converting an existing building to a brewery, you will often run into expensive modifications that have to be made.

Water

Breweries use a lot of water. You need to ensure that the city can supply the water your brewery will need, and at the proper pressure. You will also need to add in additional filtration to take your city grade water up to beer grade.

Electricity

Breweries need a lot of power and heat, much more than an average office or retail space. Look at the size of your heating equipment to ensure the utilities have enough electrical power or natural gas run to your brewery.

Proper Drainage

Not only do breweries consume a lot of water, but they also have incredible needs for drainage. You will want to ensure you are strategic with the locations of the drains in your breweries. Most brewery drains are 4” in diameter with stainless steel or fiberglass grating. Ensure that the floors all gently slope to the drains as well. Careful planning here will save you from some big headaches once you are in production.

The Ideal Brewery Building: Steel

Once you know how you want your brewery to be laid out, it’s time to figure out how to make that happen. Steel buildings are one of the most efficient ways to quickly and economically make your brewery a reality. Steel buildings are low-cost, efficient, and long-lasting structures that give you a great deal of modularity and flexibility.

The Cost of a Steel Building for a Brewery

Allied Steel Buildings keep costs for your brewery low with their innovative modular kit system. Allowing Allied to pre-design panels not only saves time on your brewery’s construction, but reduces costs since Allied is able to purchase in bulk and preassemble as much as possible. Compared to traditional stick-built or tilt-up construction, metal buildings are the way to go.

DISCLAIMER: The drastic fluctuation in construction prices mandate using this information as a general guide. It is important to understand that supply chain issues, material costs, and consumer demand can significantly impact cost estimates.

Work with Allied Steel Buildings to Build Your Dream Brewery

To learn more about how to make your dream a reality now, reach out to Allied Steel Buildings today. Their experts are there to guide you through every step of the process.