$7000 budget to get a 200L -> 500L brewery

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

TL:DR; Need to know what are the costs involved in getting together a 200L to 500L brewhouse. Essentially I am wondering if it is feasible to get a 200L - 500L brewhouse together for under 7000 USD. Equipment costs only, and preferably without any specialist labour/assembly required.


I got a request from a friend who is based abroad, and far from a traditional brewing nation. He is involved with a lot of food hacking, preserving, cultures etc. and his community has a shared setup for the production of food. I am not fully certain of the details, but this is a semi-commercial operation i think.

My mate wants to start making beer as part of this operation, and he has recently been awarded a budget of $7000 USD to provision the brew house. So the opportunity sounds pretty cool, as beer brewing is in its infancy over there, and his community is very curious about it - they have probably only been exposed to commercial lagers.

There are some down sides - my mate has never brewed all grain before, and I have cautioned him that you dont want to start learning AG on full size equipment. He probably will have a few issues sourcing ingredients, and the fermentation area will be mixed purpose (not just beer). They may have some temperature control.

So, it is possible to provision a 100L, 200L or larger brewhouse on this kind of budget? As he is not an experienced brewer, we can probably rule out a system that is entirely self built. I am also a bit concerned about large scale 3V systems (plumbing and transfer issues), as specialist labour may be involved.

As far as fermentation goes, I think we would be talking a maximum of 2 brew days in a fortnight, perhaps double brew days, so fermentation capacity would probably be 4x the size of the brewhouse.

I am also wondering how large a BIAB system could go, if you are supporting the bag in some way and have a winch/pulley setup, as that could be self built in the 100-200L scale.

Would appreciate anyones input here, especially if you have assembled 200L brewhouses before (which I think is the magic size where you have to rely on a lot of gear for transfers - you cant just lift everything.