Contract brewing & collaborations in Breww

Breww has dedicated tools for managing when another company produces batches for you or for when you produce batches for another company. There are five options to choose from when starting a batch in Breww, with a standard batch being a batch you brew for yourselves in your own brewhouse:

Screenshot 2023-10-10 at 11.16.58

Contract brewed by a 3rd party & Collaboration at 3rd party

If another company is brewing on your behalf, this is defined in Breww as being ‘Contract brewed by a 3rd party’, and you will be able to process the batch of beer through Breww in a similar way to your usual batches. Likewise, if you are brewing a collaborative batch at a different site, this will be processed as a ‘Collaboration at 3rd party’ batch.

Setting up a contract brewer

Firstly, you’ll need to set up your contract brewer(s) in ProductionViewContract brewersNew contract brewer. When creating your contract brewer, you can specify all the details relating to them and how the duty on beer they produce is handled (for example, whether they pay it or you do). Depending on the options chosen, you may be prompted to enter their production volumes so that Breww can calculate the applicable duty. The duty payment option selected here will be what pulls through to the batch when processing a Contract brewed by a 3rd party or Collaboration at 3rd party batch.

Screenshot 2023-04-11 at 17.41.09

Contract brewed beers and products

Now that your contract brewer is set up, there are two last things that you will need to start a contract-brewed batch and see it through to completion: the contract-brewed beers they are producing and the products you are receiving.

The good news is that the creation process is precisely the same as for beers you produce yourself. If the contract brewer is producing a beer you already have set up for your own on-site batches, there is no need to create a new beer. Any beer you create in Breww can be produced as a standard batch you brew on-site or as a contract-brewed batch produced off-site. Our help guide on Managing beers, drinks and packaging approval covers the process of creating a new beer if you want to find out more.

Once your beer is set up, you’ll need to create the products for it. Again, this process is identical to creating products for your own beers and is detailed in our introduction to products guide. If the contract brewer is packaging a beer for which you already have products set up, and they are simply contract brewing an existing product, there is no need to create a new product.

Using the contract brewer functionality

Now that you have done the setup, you can plan and start batches using your contract brewer. To do this, head to ProductionActionsNew batch. You will then need to select the option to indicate that this is Contract brewed by a 3rd party or a Collaboration at 3rd party.

You can then enter your batch details, including the contract brewer you have created. You can also choose whether you’re supplying any ingredients here by including a recipe and where any stock you provide will be taken from. If you are not supplying ingredients, you won’t need to select a recipe, but you will still have to select a site to link this batch to for when this beer is packaged.

If you and your contract brewing partner both use Breww, you can take advantage of our batch-sharing functionality. More on this can be seen at:

Once you start the batch, it will be presented in the same way as batches you brew yourself, in that you can log fermentation readings, plan packaging events and store notes.

Receiving your beer from the contract brewer

Batches can be received from your contract brewer by going into the batch itself and using the ActionsRack (package) button. The racking process is the same as any batches you produce yourself, allowing you to specify what products are being racked & include any additional stock items from your inventory. You can create multiple racking instances from the same contract brewed batch, say, for example, that half of the batch was kegged and the remainder was canned. Stock labels for anything you’ve racked from a contract-brewed batch can be accessed and printed under the “Actions” tab of the batch.

Selling contract brewed beer

Once the contract-brewed batch has been racked, it will be represented in your products list and available for sale. Depending on how the contract brewer has been configured, this will either be held in duty suspense (with duty payable by you upon delivery to your customers) or have the duty already paid by the contract brewer (with no further duty payable by you).

Contract brewed in-house & Collaboration in-house

If you are the contract brewer, brewing on behalf of someone else, you must process your batch as a batch that is Contract brewed in-house, or if you are hosting the collaborative brew, as Collaboration in-house.

When creating a batch, you can simply select from a list of customers or other contract brewers and then apply a duty payment option on a batch level. This differs slightly from a Contract brewed by 3rd party batch, where you have the duty options set against the contract brewer, which will then get pulled through to the batch.
Screenshot 2023-10-10 at 14.16.11

Once you have created this batch, you can provide a share code to the customer.

Selling the contract brewed batch to the customer

Once the contract-brewed batch has been racked, it will now be represented in your products list and available for sale. You can then raise an invoice for the customer and apply their products. If this batch is being sent back in bulk, a part-filled tank product must be created, racked into and sold to the customer. Depending on the duty options configured, this batch will either be held in duty suspense (with duty payable by the customer upon delivery to their customers) or have the duty already paid by you as the contract brewer.

Contract brewed stock and duty

The options for Duty payment options are as follows:

  • We pay the duty at our duty rate
  • We pay the duty at their duty rate
  • We pay the duty at the full duty rate
  • Partner brewery is liable for the duty (brewed under their licence)

Selecting any of the following three options will mean the batch is considered produced under your license and, therefore, added to your production figures, and the stock will be held as duty suspended until the point of sale in which your rates will be determined by what has been selected.

  • We pay the duty at our duty rate
  • We pay the duty at their duty rate
  • We pay the duty at the full duty rate

Selecting that the Partner brewery is liable for the duty will mean the batch is considered as produced under another license and will not be considered in your annual production figures. It will also mean that your stock will come in duty paid and not be liable for duty when it is sold to your customers.

Contract brewing and annual production figures

Your annual production figures that are reported on in Breww will be dependent on how you have configured your duty payment options for contract brewed batches. Our How is the “Annual production this year to date” figure shown on the duty page produced? guide gives more information on how this works in Breww.

Hi James

Just a quick question on contract brewing. Does contract brewed beer appear as a stock item and thus included as an inventory receipt of sorts in the Xero integration. I can’t seem to see that it’s possible right now but it would be great to have contract brewed batches count as receiving stock/inventory receipts so that the stock values could sync to Xero. Cheers

Hi Jack,

When you enter a contract brewed batch, the beer won’t appear as a stock item, it goes in as a packaged beer product, like if you were to rack it from your own batch. We don’t currently sync products with Xero, but could look into this if it would be helpful.

Cheers,
Matt

Thanks Matt

It would be great to get products synced to Xero so we can get accurate real time stock values between the balance sheet and p&l in Xero. We’re just starting to use the inventory receipt & stock sync with Xero so not totally sure how the integration works just yet.

Thanks for the feedback. We’ll discuss this.
If you have any other questions, just ask.

Cheers,
Matt

Hi guys

Just another question on contract brewers. Is it possible to use the Breww app to rack beer from contract brewers into our own containers? All I can see on the normal racking page is the option to scan in the scanner data which I’m guessing means we’d need a third party scanner?

Thanks

Hi Jack,

Thanks for the question.
At the moment, you can’t rack from a contract brewed batch directly from the app.
When using the web view on mobile, you won’t be able to use the mobile’s camera, unfortunately. You can only manually enter containers, or use a dedicated barcode scanner.
Being able to rack from contract brewed batches in the app is on the task list, I’ll add a vote on your behalf to the task.

Thanks,
Matt

1 Like

A post was split to a new topic: Edit who pays the duty on already started contract brews

Question about contract brewing, we are about to receive our first contract brewed batch. The contract brewer packaged the beer in cans, and they provided the cans. We provide the labels and boxes. To complete the batch in Breww I would create and rack into a smallpack multipack. But this product then comprises 24x cans and lids which would come from our stock. The question is, how can I rack this without using our cans from stock? Do I need to create a container that is a can-with-no-can, ie does not include the can and lid stock items? Then make a product with those ghost cans and our actual boxes and labels? Or am I missing something here… Thanks in advance for any help!

When you’re going through the racking process, you’ll get to a step titled “Stock items used”. At this step, the items that you’ve linked to the product/container type will be pre-filled, but you are free to adjust them as needed.

You can click the delete button next to the cans, leaving the labels & boxes and then Breww will only use these items when completing the racking. The final step of the process is a confirmation screen and so you should be able to double-check this looks as expected before confirming.

Cheers :smile:

1 Like

Morning,
Point me at the help file or discussion if there is one please otherwise…
We contract brew for other people and I realise again I’ve been seeing these setting the wrong way round (i.e that they’re our customer not vice versa), when I set up a customer as contract brew customer and select the duty/production option for them.
Please can you detail for each option the effects if any per batch/products on our production records and the duty return so I know what will be being posted so far and can make any manual adjustments if any needed.

I also please need to know how to calibrate the setting so the production is included for us, either beer or spirits but that the duty setting can be paid or suspended depending on the racking being done for duty paid or suspended movements. I think I have used the they pay duty (brewed under license) option in error because all the other options are we pay the duty and in the large we don’t, its duty suspended and declared on other brewery returns (but obviously it should be included in our production figures).
Cheers
Thank you

Hi Claire,

Sure, it’s a great question. I think our article on How is the "Annual production this year to date" figure shown on the duty page produced? should cover your question on the impact of the duty settings. Based on my understanding of your second point, I think you want to set your customer in those circumstances as a partner brewery is liable for the duty (brewed under their license), it will then not count towards your duty return. However, you can still view your production figures on the beer duty pageas here you can see what has been produced In house and offsite under your license and under another business licence, as shown in the screenshot below.

I hope this answers your question, but let us know if you need any more support at all.

Hi Claire

We do a lot of this and this is how we do it.

For all contract customers, we select the ‘contract brewed in house’ option on all batches we brew for contract customers whether they’re receiving in duty suspension or not.

I would imagine that you are always brewing under your own licence so this is the option you would need to choose.

If you’re then selling beer to contract customers in duty suspense, you would then need to edit that customer’s profile in Breww and select ‘receives beer in duty suspense’. When you then sell beer to them, the duty won’t be applied and will instead be listed on your duty return as a duty suspense movement out of your premises.

This will mean that all your production will go towards your production totals, whether sold under duty suspense or not, like it should.

Hope that helps.

1 Like

Hi, I’m trying to find a work around. We bring in bulk whiskey and package it to sell ourselves, i was thinking i could set up a contractor and bring the bulk liquid in that way but don’t see an option to bring in bulk liquid for packaging? Is there any way to intake bulk liquid?

why can’t you just have your “bulk liquid” as a stock item? Is there a tax / duty angle?

Don’t use the tax/ duty side as in Ireland but you can’t pack/ rack a stock item

If tax / duty isn’t an issue (I guess the bulk is coming in duty paid, or whatever), do you need to “rack” it?
How do I sell a stock item in Breww (e.g. glassware or t-shirts)? - Stock item products - Help docs & tutorials / Stock items - Breww Community

But if you do need to rack, I guess you’d use the stock “bulk” in a batch (by adding volume?). Then rack from that batch?

Hi Ronan, thanks for your message. If you are bringing in the whiskey in bulk and packaging this yourself, does this mean that you would like this to be filled into one of your vessels on your production dashboard? If so, then it sounds like first setting up a new drink type of ‘Whiskey’ would work for you here. Our Managing your drink types (beer, sprits, cider, wine, etc) help article should guide you through how to do this. You will be able to set the applicable duty option here, and whilst there isn’t an automatic calculation for Irish duty currently, setting this would mean the setup enables this if the Calculation of Irish alcohol duty feature request were to get implemented in the future.

You will then be able to create your packaged whiskey products using this new drink type and Whiskey drink. You will then be able to create a Collaboration in-house batch (even though it technically is not), as this would allow you to set up the Distillery from which you are purchasing the Whiskey and have this held against the batch. You will then be able to process this and get it into your production dashboard so you can hold it in your vessels and rack it into products.

Alternatively, if this does not need to enter one of your vessels, you could create this as a ‘contract brewed at 3rd party’ batch, where you can create a batch and rack it.

Let me know if this sounds correct or if I have misunderstood this, and I would be happy to offer further assistance! Cheers!

1 Like

Thanks, that works fine. Handy to be able to track vols in vessel etc and take care of label stocks, cheers

2 Likes