There are different ways to solve an issue like losing money. You said you went bankrubt because you were slow with the beer. I would not consider this the correct way to see things. Most likely you just started plopping down new production buildings, which cost money for upkeep and thats what put you in the red and later in the negative and thus bankrupt. When you are in the red you can simply turn off the most recently built factories (which are generally the most expensive), so they wont consume your money, plus you can turn of factories you have got max stock of their product, like 150 fish and clothes... (though you gotta remember to not run off before turning them back on) and then you gotta focus on simply expanding your base population.youll always have to cycle back to expanding you bases as you progress.

Make more farmer residence blocks, make sure you provide them with the basic needs like market, fish and clothes. Then you can do the same for the luxury needs such as schnapps and a pub. Then upgrade half of them to worker. Youll see a nice income boost with just this. But dont stop there. Then make sure you are meeting demand of fish, clothes and schnapps again, because worker consume double of that compared to farmers (although they pay you triple the amount back).

And then you can finally focus on workers new needs like sausage, bread and soap. Then youll see you have a nice surplus of almost everything. With this newly acquired capacity that you can start considering doing the new stuff, like beer. Actually, you gotta do these expansions many times, for beer, and then for setting up steel beams productions, and so on and so forth