The Cold Side

Monday morning: the $2,400 you can price is the smallest part of the problem. Mac and Wren on what to look at, what you can still change — and the three tanks that have been sitting longest. First Runnings: $2,400 a year. Six rush ingredient orders at $400 expedited freight — an assumption, stated as one. But the freight line is only the freight line. It doesn't include the brew day you moved, the beer you made with substitute malt, or the four hours somebody spent on the phone instead of on the floor. Hot Side: the Monday walk. Twenty-two years of walking the floor, and the difference between knowing you're low on Citra because you can feel it in the cooler — and seeing it on a screen before it costs you. Ask BrewBuddy (real question, real account, whatever it says is what you hear): which three tanks have been sitting the longest, and how many days each? BT-1, Raven Stout: day 19. BT-2, Highland Heritage: day 17. FV-4, Alma De La Tierra: day 14. FV-5 close behind at day 13, five days into cold crash against its own three-day window — waiting on brite space. Dry Hops: put a due date on every recurring task, even if the date is wrong — a wrong date gets corrected the first time it goes red, a blank one never does anything at all. And keep the walk: whatever ends up on a screen, still go put your hand on the tank. Last Call: Monday, before you walk the floor, write down the three things that would hurt worst if they were already late. Then go find out whether any of them has a date on it anywhere. Cold Side is from FermentIQ — built by a brewer, fifteen years on the floor, no engineering background, who directed AI coding agents to build the ERP he couldn't buy. It runs the whole operation, grain to glass. The first thirty days are free and you can cancel anytime at ferment-iq.com.

Cold Side, Episode 6: Six To One: The Taproom Math Nobody Says Out Loud A pour in your taproom and a keg on a distributor's truck are the same beer, and they are not the same business. This episode works out what a barrel is worth in each room, then spends most of its time on the costlier question of what that ratio leaves out. Halfway through we stop arguing and ask FermentIQ's built-in assistant to split a real August straight off the invoice records, and you hear the answer it gives. The number: 6.7 to 1, taproom revenue per barrel against wholesale, on a $7 pour and a $120 half-barrel keg. Both are stated on air as assumptions. Push both hard the other way and it is still about four and a half to one. The action: Take last month. Barrels through the taproom, barrels wholesale, and the revenue from each. Divide. Then look at your brew schedule and ask whether it matches the answer. Segments: 00:00 First Runnings 01:16 Hot Side: what a barrel actually earns in each room, and why the ratio is not margin 07:59 Ask BrewBuddy: "How much did I invoice my taproom in August, and how much did I invoice everybody else?" 09:02 Dry Hops 10:04 Last Call Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com

Cold Side, Episode 5: Six Hundred Kegs: The Asset You Never Counted Most brewers can tell you what one keg costs and almost none can tell you what the whole fleet is worth, where it is today, or how much of it is never coming home. This episode puts a number on the capital a keg fleet ties up, a separate number on what it quietly loses every year, and is careful about which of the two ever reaches your bank account. The number: $19,375 of steel you would not have had to buy. Assume 600 half-barrels at $125 each and 2,000 fills a year, and that fleet turns 3.3 times; at 4.5 turns those same 2,000 fills need only 445 kegs, leaving 155 surplus. Nobody sends you that money, though, because the steel is already bought: growing, it is kegs you don't buy next spring, and flat, it is surplus you would have to sell at a loss to realize. The figure that does leave your bank account is the other one, 8% attrition on 600 kegs, which is 48 kegs and $6,000 a year, every year. The action: Count the kegs in your building today. Empty, full, dirty, all of it. Then write down what you think you own. The difference is out in the world, and some of it isn't coming home. Segments: 0:00 First Runnings 1:16 Hot Side: what a keg fleet is worth, what it loses every year, and the difference between surplus steel and money 8:50 Ask BrewBuddy: "How many kegs did I deliver to accounts in June, and how many different accounts took them?" 9:38 Dry Hops 10:44 Last Call Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. This episode carries no industry statistics at all: the $125 keg price, the 8% attrition rate and the 4.5-turn target are assumptions, and each one is labeled out loud on air in the same breath it is introduced. The Ask BrewBuddy segment is a live query run against a real account, played back unedited. FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com

Cold Side, Episode 4: Your Cost Per Barrel Is Wrong, and Loss Is Why Ask a brewer what a barrel of the flagship costs and the answer comes off a card in the office: grain, hops and yeast, divided by batch size. This episode is about the second number in that division, because nobody has ever bought a barrel of wort. The number: 12% understated. Assume $600 of ingredients for a 15-barrel batch and the card says $40 a barrel. Package 13.4 of those barrels and the honest ingredient cost is $44.78. That gap is 11.9%, and the same 11.9% sits on every cost you divide by planned barrels instead of packaged ones. The action: Take your last three batches of one beer. Write down planned barrels and packaged barrels, then divide your ingredient cost by the packaged figure. Run it again with payroll, the building and the power bill on top, because ingredients are the smallest of the three. Segments: 0:00 First Runnings 1:32 Hot Side: the denominator that hides twelve percent, and why Wren won't give Mac a single cost-per-barrel number 8:53 Ask BrewBuddy: "What was my packaged yield on my last three completed batches?" 10:29 Dry Hops 11:19 Last Call Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. The $600 ingredient bill is an assumption and we say so on air. The Ask BrewBuddy segment is a live query run against a real account, played back unedited. FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com

Cold Side, Episode 3: The Weekend You Get Back: Reporting Without Reconstructing The Brewer's Report of Operations takes about twenty minutes to fill in. Everything before it — the brew sheets, the keg board, the text message to the cellar guy who quit in June — is what actually takes the weekend, and this episode puts a number on that. The number: 60 hours a year. Five hours a month is an assumption and Wren labels it one on air, but at a forty-hour week that is a week and a half of an owner's time spent rebuilding a figure the brewery already had. The action: Take last month's filed numbers and try to tie the removals line back to actual sales and taproom depletions. Just that one line. Time yourself doing it, because however long that takes is your problem statement. Segments: 0:00 First Runnings 1:20 Hot Side: what the monthly report actually costs, and whether a whiteboard photo fixes it 7:56 Ask BrewBuddy: "What are my total removals for the month so far?" 9:16 Dry Hops 10:19 Last Call Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. The Ask BrewBuddy segment is a live query run against the product, played back unedited. FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com

Cold Side, Episode 2: Five Generations: What Repitching Actually Costs You Mac and Wren run the math on yeast repitching — liquid versus dry, on a 15-barrel system pitching 52 batches a year, with the cost of a dumped batch written into both calculations. The number that survives depends on whether you can count your generations, and most breweries can't. The number: $51,600 a year on liquid yeast, or $7,525 on dry. Same brewery, same question. Both figures are conditional on tracking your slurry. The action: Find your oldest slurry and write down three things — what generation it is, when it was harvested, and what beer it came out of. If you can't answer all three, buy fresh. Segments: 0:00 First Runnings 0:50 Repitching: the liquid vs. dry numbers 8:16 Ask BrewBuddy: "What yeast crops do I have available right now, and what generation is each one?" 11:21 Dry Hops 12:17 Last Call Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com

Four fermenters, and you want to make more beer. What do you buy? Nothing. You golook at how long beer actually sits in the tanks you already own.Mac and Wren work out what four days off your average tank occupancy is worth on afifteen-barrel system, where those four days are actually hiding (none of them arefermentation), and why the whole thing is worthless if you can't sell the beer.The number: 130 barrels a year. Almost 17% more beer out of the same steel. No loan,no permit.The action: Pull fill-date-to-clean-date occupancy on your busiest fermenter for thelast six months and average it. If that number is more than four days longer than youractual fermentation and conditioning time, you have found free beer.Segments00:00  First Runnings01:15  Hot Side — where the four days actually go07:49  Ask BrewBuddy — "Which fermenter has been occupied the longest right now,       and what stage is that batch in?"09:24  Dry Hops10:15  Last CallMac and Wren are AI voices. The brewing and the math are real — every figure we cite,we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it.FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverageproducers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com