Full disclosure: I'm not a brewer. My brother-in-law is, which is how I ended up in a garage in Port Orchard one Saturday afternoon looking at a three-tier pilot system and asking dumb questions about mash tuns. Six months later, after watching him run a 45-batch year out of OneNote and a paper notebook, I offered to build the software he wished existed.
breweryops is that software. Built for microbreweries and nanobreweries — the 3-30 bbl tier. Small enough that commercial enterprise-brewery software (Ekos, OrchestratedBEER) is priced out of reach. Big enough that Excel is insufficient.
The Data Model
Six core entities:
- Recipe. Grain bill, hop schedule, yeast strain, adjuncts. Scales to any batch size.
- Batch. An actual production run of a recipe. Has OG, SG readings over time, notes, actual cost, actual ABV.
- Vessel. HLT, mash tun, kettle, fermenter, brite. Current occupancy, CIP status.
- Ingredient. Per-lot malt, hops, yeast with purchase date + cost. Per-batch usage deducts.
- Package. Keg (1/2, 1/6, 1/4 bbl), can, bottle. Tracked from fill through tap to empty return.
- Wholesale account. A bar / restaurant buying your beer. Invoices, deliveries, empty-keg returns, A/R.
Recipe Scaling
Every recipe is stored yield-parameterized. Ingredients are per-barrel values with a utilization/loss factor. Scale to 3.5 bbl for a pilot batch or to 15 bbl for a full production run; every ingredient quantity recomputes.
class RecipeIngredient(Base):
recipe_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey("recipe.id"))
ingredient_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey("ingredient.id"))
amount_per_bbl = Column(Float, nullable=False)
utilization_pct = Column(Float, default=100.0)
# for hops: when to add (whirlpool, dry hop, boil at X min)
timing = Column(String)
def scaled_quantity(self, target_bbl):
base = self.amount_per_bbl * target_bbl
return base * (100.0 / self.utilization_pct)Hops are the interesting case — the "utilization" factor varies by addition timing (a 60-minute bittering addition has different utilization math than a flameout hop). The recipe stores the timing, the scaling math respects it.
Gravity Tracking
Original gravity, specific gravity readings over fermentation, finishing gravity. Plotted as a curve. Apparent attenuation and ABV auto-calculated. Compare batch-over-batch to catch consistency drift.
Tilt hydrometer integration (Hosted Pro tier) auto-logs readings every 15 minutes. You stare at your fermenter's attenuation curve in real-time. When fermentation stalls, you see it within hours instead of days.
Vessel Management
Every vessel is a tracked resource. The brewhouse has limited capacity; every time a batch occupies a fermenter, that fermenter is unavailable for 2-4 weeks. Scheduling conflicts happen constantly in small breweries — "we can't brew the Saison on Tuesday because Fermenter 3 is still full of the IPA."
breweryops shows a vessel calendar: rows are vessels, columns are weeks, cells show which batch is in which vessel when. Double-booking is caught at plan time, not in crisis at 7 AM on brew day.
Keg Tracking
Microbreweries lose money on lost kegs. A 1/2 bbl keg is ~$150. Lose 20 a year to accounts that claim they returned them and you didn't get one, and you're out $3,000.
breweryops tracks each keg individually (by QR code in Hosted Pro). Every state transition logs: filled, delivered to Account X, returned empty, cleaned, filled again. Disputes become "here's the log of this specific keg, which you last had on Feb 14 and we have no record of it coming back."
TTB Reporting
Federal brewers' notice holders have to file TTB reports. State excise tax reports are required in most states. breweryops generates both in TTB-accepted formats (Hosted Pro tier).
This is the single feature that makes brewery software worth paying for, full stop. A brewery that files a bad TTB report can get a federal audit. A brewery that files on time with clean numbers looks professional and stays compliant. The difference is hours vs days of bookkeeper time per quarter.
Pricing
- Self-host: $0. Complete feature set except TTB auto-generation (self-host gets the template; you file).
- Hosted Pro: $99/mo. Managed, Tilt/Brewfather gravity import, QR keg tracking, TTB + state excise auto-gen, email support.
- Multi-brewery: $299/mo. Multi-brewery accounts, distributor-portal integration, scale tare + batch cost drilldown, SSO.
Ekos is $299-999/month depending on plan. breweryops Hosted Pro at $99/month is meaningfully cheaper and covers the 3-30 bbl operational needs.
Who It's For
Brewpubs. Microbreweries with a taproom. Nanobreweries self-distributing to 5-20 accounts. The contract-brewed gypsy brewer working out of someone else's space. Not for giant regional breweries (they need enterprise systems). In between, this fits.
A brewery's margin lives in the gap between recipe cost and shelf price. Software that keeps that gap visible — batch cost, keg tracking, ingredient reorder — pays for itself in one saved batch.
Related
cateringpro for breweries running events + catering. cheesemaking as the 'small-batch aged production' parallel. shiftfill for taproom staff scheduling.