Three Times The Fun, Three Times The Problems
Ask anyone who runs a brewery what it’s like and the response is often likened to having three jobs. So, what’s it like to juggle beer, wine and spirits?
“It’s tricky,” says Harman, but doable, because in most cases, if the need arises, employees in one area know how to work in the other two, and all three facilities can operate largely on their own.
That’s not to say that all the equipment is the same. All of the businesses interviewed for this article have three separate bottling lines with their own unique settings, temperaments and moving parts. In most cases they need to be housed in separate areas, which means additional overhead and expenses. They all have their own governmental regulations. Nothing—everyone said—about running a brewery, winery and distillery is cheap.
“It’s a challenge,” Siddle says. “There are pluses and minuses. The hardest part of it is that each has different marketability, production and consistencies.” He says that it wasn’t very long after opening each new venture that there were new piles of paperwork and regulations to sort through. All very routine and very specific—the kind that makes eyes glaze over but that is important and mandatory nonetheless.
“Working within the letter of the law for all three takes a lot of time,” says Rick Moersch of Round Barn. Learning the trade does as well.
Moersch freely admits that the family members don’t know all they can, but says they are continually striving to improve their game—as all business owners do. They have brought in consultants and tweaked recipes. They have taken classes in all three beverage fields and follow trends. “It’s all fermentation at its core, but the difference is what happens during and after,” he says.
Having three distinct businesses in one portfolio means always having many irons in many fires. But there’s also a larger chance for reward, both financially and in terms of customer appreciation.
Paperwork and equipment is nothing, however, compared with yeast.
Having a winery means keeping things clean. The wild yeast strains (or just the everyday ones) that brewers have embraced as of late would ruin batches of wine, so avoiding cross contamination is key. Cisco produces a sour ale series called The Woods, and Horner, the brewer, says that while there has never been a problem with cells jumping from the brewery to the winery, everyone keeps a close eye on the operations to make sure the microbes stay where they are supposed to.
