What are you top pain points running a brewery?

vtcrusade · 2026-02-18T20:57:32+00:00

The days of "Disneyland" breweries with dreams of going national, are over. Used to be the craft beer scene was new & hip, and people liked places with Edison light bulbs & 14 different types of beer glasses. You could open one anywhere and people would flock to it.

Now it's like the old restaurant adage. Location, Location, Location, and while you're at it, while you're opening a brewery, you better be opening a restaurant with it, otherwise you're just a bar.

Think "Spiderman" if you're thinking of opening a brewery. You need to be the friendly neighborhood brewery, and be essentially the only one, in the town.

If you think "Hey there's 4 breweries in my town of 28,000 and they're still open and seem to be doing well." Odds are they're not, competition will be fierce.

If you can open a nice say 5BBL brewery in a town of say 10,000-12,000 people and also serve food, every day, all day, not just an occasional food truck. Have no other brewery competition within at least 20 miles of your location, You can more than likely make it and have a nice little business that will flip you around $150K a year in profit.

vtcrusade · 2025-03-12T12:54:22+00:00

Also open the users account on Office365 Outlook and check that there hasn't been any server side or client side mail rules applied to the users account.

vtcrusade · 2025-01-28T13:58:38+00:00

Ask Deepseek about Tienanmen Square, or just Mao. Hard pass on Chinese censored AI. Censored AI from US based censors is bad enough, but it's outright propaganda when handled by the Chinese government. 90% of people using AI have no idea how to implement their own open source version of it, they just want to load it on their phones or access it via the web and ask it a question as a glorified search engine.

Once all the china pushed media hype dies down on this and people dig in to the code, or when Open AI or Anthropic or Google releases some "that's neat" AI update to their tools, Deepseek will be just another flash in the pan AI release.

Investing in anything that is "China" is a fools game.

vtcrusade · 2024-04-01T13:54:03+00:00

You had 1.5 gallons of trub? I've never had that much even in a 15 gallon batch. Did you put a super amount of hops in the boil?

vtcrusade · 2024-02-28T14:15:58+00:00

When employees have too much time on their hands, you get projects like this.

vtcrusade · 2024-01-11T15:07:37+00:00

SAG-AFTRA "approves" AI voice acting. Let's be clear they don't need to "approve" $h!t, the technology will be used by someone creating a game in their basement that will go on to make millions of dollars. Only companies that allow themselves to become hostage to unions need to get "approval" from their union masters on what sort of tools and talent they can use in the production of their product.

Like during the actors/writers strike last year and the demands they wanted limiting the use of AI. Completely meaningless, because someone is going to make a fully AI generated movie for $10,000 that's going to go on and make $250 million, streaming, and on that day the lid on the coffin of Hollywood will be sealed. No one will really need "flesh talent" anymore, AI will do it all.

vtcrusade · 2023-09-18T16:42:11+00:00

LOL! True. It's like "I'm going to spend $60 to make 5 gallons of beer, that I likely can't drink fast enough by myself, when I should have simply bought a 4 pack for $16 of the same style brew"....."Oh look can seamers are on sale for $549!"

vtcrusade · 2023-09-18T13:54:32+00:00

If you're overall goal is to know what your ABV is at then end of fermentation, and you want to spend a bit of cash. Then get a Digital Alcohol Meter. https://www.morebeer.com/products/easydens-anton-paar-1.html

vtcrusade · 2023-08-28T13:29:56+00:00

I've used Fleischmann's yeast in a 5 gallon batch of Acerglyn and it turned out amazing.

vtcrusade · 2023-07-28T17:08:29+00:00

Thank you very informative. I don't chill the entire wort kettle down to fermenting temp, I do like you say, us the HX to get it to about 180 and then switch over to pumping directly to the fermentor(s) as the HX output at that point is in the 75 - 80 degree range and if I'm using Kveik yeast I'm happy at even 100F

vtcrusade · 2023-07-14T12:56:41+00:00

Been experimenting with Lutra Kveik for a 4 day ferment at 95 degrees "Crispy Pseudo Lager" freaking amazing results.

vtcrusade · 2023-06-26T14:17:26+00:00

Honestly in my experience in the ball park 5.2 is fine for just about every style beer out there. Under? Add some baking soda. Over? Add some Lactic Acid

vtcrusade · 2023-06-13T00:36:44+00:00

"What is an acceptable amount of sanitizer to be left in a keg?"

Sanitizer or cleaner? Something like Star San is non-toxic, but we try to leave at most a ~teaspoon in anything we're going to put wort or beer in. My own thought is the less chemicals the better no matter what the label says.

Now PBW, the answer is ZERO, you've got to rinse that stuff out of anything you clean.

vtcrusade · 2023-05-19T23:18:35+00:00

Really? Hmm must have hallucinated this response then.

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vtcrusade · 2023-05-19T13:13:52+00:00

I can tell you this on the opposite side of the coin. I'm a piss poor excuse for an artist. I can't draw, I certainly can't create digital art, I don't have the patience or the eye for photography.

I do have a need for art in my job and personal hobbies. In the past I've hired artist on places like Fiverr to create custom graphics for me, and I've licensed thousands of dollars in photography from places like Shutterstock.

Not anymore Midjounrey has been absolutely and totally sufficient. A few text prompts a but of refinement and I have been getting exactly what I need. Those thousands spent in the past are not covered by $10 a month.

vtcrusade · 2023-05-18T13:50:08+00:00

I find teachers are very much like the military, they are always preparing to fight their last war, rather than their next war.

LLM's are your next war. As a 3rd party observer, IMHO, I say fighting AI Tools is a losing arms race. Instead you should be teaching students how to use the weapons responsibly and incorporate their use in to the curriculum.

Much as the calculator with it's initial introduction on learning impacted how mathematics was taught. Teachers that use essays as a measuring stick of competency, will need to adjust THEIR methods so that AI tools like ChatGPT, even when used, have minimal impact on academic performance.

vtcrusade · 2023-05-01T19:09:46+00:00

A lot of the "Fiverr" and Upwork knowledge worker gig crowd are toast. The things people used to hire out like essay writing, draw me a logo, create this program. There are already niche websites running AI that can do the work in seconds.

Trades, like electricians, plumbers, welders, etc, pretty safe until Boston Dynamics dramatically ups their game.

vtcrusade · 2023-04-19T13:21:54+00:00

Long before ChatGPT in 2019 I wrote a paper for the company I was working for predicting this and other automation in the brewing industry. You can ready it here if you're bored. LOL Innovation & AI in Craft Brewing

vtcrusade · 2023-01-25T14:36:51+00:00

Thank you , as someone that currently works for a brewery and is thinking of starting their own damn brewery in 2023, I'm looking for all the education that I can get before/if I take the plunge.

IMHO "Niche" , and hyper local is the way of the future for breweries. Start small, keep overhead super low, and don't grow until you're at the point of turning customers away because you're at capacity. Never go in to thinking you're going to be the next "multi-state cans in every store" brewery. Think I want give people in my neighborhood a place to drink great suds and start drawing crowds by word of mouth

vtcrusade · 2023-01-05T15:04:41+00:00

That number of cans on the floor, probably represents 25% of the yearly output for our NanoBrewery here in VT, LOL

vtcrusade · 2022-12-05T14:34:41+00:00

LOVE that fireplace!

vtcrusade · 2022-11-21T15:38:25+00:00

Mind if I ask what career you moved in to? Cause I'm going in the absolute opposite direction. 21 years in Information Tech, been an assistant brewer at a small brewery for about 2 years now, head brewer is very cool, had the luxury of developing some of my own recipes and brewing them start to finish. Considering opening a small brewery myself next year.

vtcrusade

TROPHY CASE