Several months ago we received a phone call from a customer of mine who knew Pete was a keen home-brewer. She runs a gift basket company and wants to include a range of boutique beers in her baskets. She offered us the opportunity to do the brewing for her... so that caused a week or so of trying to work out prices on the beers - talking to suppliers, working out recipes and what equipment was needed etc.
So with a price accepted, we had to look at what we needed in the way of licences. After speaking to the Alcohol Industry Group (part of the ATO), we need a Brewer's licence - this will let us sell to anyone with a retail liquor licence eg pubs, bottle shops etc. To get the licence though, we need to set up an area with separate access that is suitable as a brewing area. We decided it would be best to create an enclosed room in the garage as the brewing business.
The first hurdle was to find out from council if they would let us set up a microbrewery as a home-based business - if not, we were pretty much sunk! I spoke to the town planner and we submitted a proposal to him detailing what the business would do, how often, whether there would be visitors to the site etc. Well the good news is, today we got the go ahead that they
would consider it a home based activity (subject to it meeting some guidelines)! YAY!!
Next steps are to do some research into the standards we have to meet, design the room, get a price to build it, see if the AIG is ok with it and submit it as a DA to council... This could be a loooong process!
