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:
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 Production → View → Contract brewers → New 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.
Using the contract brewer functionality
Now that your contract brewer is set up, you can plan and start batches with them. To do this, head to Production → Actions → New 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 Actions → Rack (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.
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.
