So you're a homebrewer in Miami and you want to start a brewery. If population density is any indicator, the market is ripe compared to Asheville, North Carolina, a city of 83,000 people that has at least a dozen breweries (including brewpubs) and counting.

Eddie Leon, 44, founder of Most Wanted Brewery in Doral, is one of two brewery startups in Miami-Dade. Along with Wynwood Brewing Company, Most Wanted is on the rise.

See also:



- Misfit Home-Brewers Help Lead Miami's Craft Beer Invasion



According to the Brewer's Association, a trade group, the financial rate of growth in the craft beer industry was 15 percent for 2010 and 2011. By mid-2012, that number was 14 percent. And the retail value of craft beer increased by more than $1 billion between 2010 and 2011.

With

numbers like those, a craft brewery investment might be the way to go,

even in a sluggish economy. That's the way Leon sees it, which

is why he decided to take his leap of faith. But for his middle-class family of four, it's a

huge financial gamble.

Leon earned a master's degree in architecture from Florida International University and runs his

own digital graphic design business. He got back into homebrewing after a several-year hiatus before deciding to go commercial.

Many homebrewers might have similar ideas.

But there is a process, a rite of passage if you will, to

becoming a professional brewer. There's plenty of red tape and many potential financial setbacks. So far, everything is clicking for Leon, having recently acquired a brewing space at 10400 NW 33rd St. in Doral.





Short Order interviewed Leon in an attempt to demystify the beginning stages of a brewery startup in Florida. New Times: If you're a homebrewer and want to start a brewery, what is the first step?

Eddie Leon: If you're a first-time business owner, you should definitely have a business plan that sort of lays out what is it going to cost you and at what point you're going to generate enough profits to cover your costs. Ultimately, you're putting all of your money into a machine that needs to generate revenue, and obviously nobody has endlessly deep pockets, so you need to be able to do something with the gamble that you're going to play that will sustain the growth of your business. What goes into making a business plan for a microbrewery?

Anybody can do a microbrewery. First decide if you want to be a brewpub or a production brewery, or a nano-brewery. A brewpub can make and sell beer with its food, and that's it. A production brewery can distribute anywhere but cannot sell food. The nano-brewery is a smaller and more affordable brewing system. These are popular start-up business models, but the big problem is they produce much less beer while working around the clock for not much money. You will barely break even and reach full production capacity in a few months. It's all about economy of scale. A nano-brewery is going to be less expensive, but the rate of failure is higher, so bigger is better. From what I hear, if you're a homebrewer who brews a lot of beer and wants to put it on the shelves and do it without very much money and to do something the size of a Wynwood or Most Wanted, you're going to need at least a half-million dollars to do it. In the brewing community, that's the general rule of thumb, and it could easily go up to $1 million. How do you gain wide appeal?

You have to go to a lot of festivals. I decided that I preferred more of the brand-building idea. This idea of a brand that people can create a connection with, a lifestyle brand, that can relate to the beers that we're making, and these would be beers that are going into distribution. The important thing is that you need at least one beer that has somewhat wide appeal so that most people will be able to drink it. And it has to be a sessionable beer. What is a "sessionable" beer?

A sessionable beer is a beer that you can have, in one sitting, multiple amounts. Let's say if you're watching a football game, you might want a beer that you can have a few bottles of as opposed to a very strong dark beer that you can drink only half a bottle. It's good to have a beer that's sessionable because that could be your flagship beer that you can basically sell a lot of and it's easy to produce. A lot of great breweries are able to experiment with other beers because of the profits of their flagships. To that I recommend homebrewers continue doing the great beers all of their friends love, but also keep in mind that those beers might not necessarily be profitable. They need to have a least one good beer that can sustain their growth.