The best way how to estimate your brewery size and cellar tanks configuration is to calculate beer production in the space of a year, as this enables you to better estimate how many fermenters you need.
How much beer per year you envisage to brew?
How much beer you plan to sell monthly or weekly on the start up and on full expansion of your brewery?
These are first principal questions we’re asking our customers after we’re approached by them.
For basic capacity calculation see our examples below but you also need to have in mind future brewery expansion – installing additional fermenters/unitanks and also brewhouse upgrade (if more batches daily are envisaged).This relates to floor space and to glycol chillier system capacity as well.
For more info see our microbrewery expansion article.
Brewery capacity calculation:
To make it simple, we will calculate 20 fermenting & conditioning production cycles per year. We consider both fermenting and maturation/lagering being performed in CCT unitanks.
We calculate that:
average cycle fermenting + conditioning takes 17-18 days,
350 days per year divided by 17 days = 20 production cycles per year.
Of course, if fermenting & maturation cycle of your beers is shorter/longer than 20 days, your number of production cycles per year is accordingly smaller/bigger and you will have to calculate less/more fermenters/CCT-unitanks for each of the below presented examples.
Example 1:
400HL of beer per year (40.000L) brewery size 3HL or 5HL:
400HL divided by 20 cycles per year = 20HL -> 20HL of tanks capacity needed for 1 cycle
20HL per 1 cycle can be produced by:
5HL-pub brewery with 4 CCT-unitanks 5HL or by:
3HL-pub brewery with 7 CCT-unitanks 3HL
Example 2:
800HL of beer per year (80.000L) brewery size 3HL or 5HL:
800HL divided by 20 cycles per year = 40HL -> 40HL of tanks capacity needed for 1 cycle
40HL per 1 cycle can be produced by:
5HL-pub brewery with 4 CCT-unitanks 10HL or by:
3HL-pub brewery with 7 CCT-unitanks 6HL
Example 3:
1.600HL of beer per year (160.000L) brewery size 5HL or 10HL:
1.600HL divided by 20 cycles per year = 80HL -> 80HL of tanks capacity needed for 1 cycle
80HL per 1 cycle can be produced by:
5HL-microbrewery with 8 CCT-unitanks 10HL or by:
10HL-microbrewery with 4 CCT-unitanks 20HL
Example 4:
6.000HL of beer per year (600.000L) brewery size 20HL or 30HL:
6.000HL divided by 20 cycles per year = 300HL -> 300HL of tanks capacity needed for 1 cycle
300HL per 1 cycle can be produced by:
20HL-microbrewery with 8 CCT-unitanks 40HL or by:
30HL-microbrewery with 5 CCT-unitanks 60HL
Example 5:
20.000HL of beer per year (2.000.000L) brewery size 40HL or 50HL:
20.000HL divided by 20 cycles per year = 1.000HL -> 1.000HL of tanks capacity needed for 1 cycle
1.000HL per 1 cycle can be produced by:
40HL-microbrewery with 13 CCT-unitanks 40HL or by:
50HL-microbrewery with 10 CCT-unitanks 100HL
Our brewery size calculation examples are based on average length of production cycle
(fermentation + maturation/lagering of beer).