Should you build or buy Brewery, Distillery & Craft Beverage Production?
Craft beverage production software runs the brewhouse floor: recipes, batch tracking, keg and case inventory, cost of goods, and TTB compliance reporting. Breweries, distilleries, cideries and meaderies buy it to replace paper logs and spreadsheets with one system that ties production to sales and accounting.
Buy a production and TTB system; the self-built options in real breweries are spreadsheets beside a purchased platform, not replacements for it, and vendor pricing starts at tens of dollars a month.
Build it, buy it, or bridge?
When building makes sense
Building a production system rarely pays off for a single brewery. The workflow (recipe formulation, batch scheduling, keg and lot tracking, TTB reporting) is well understood, and vendors have already built it for a few hundred dollars a month or less. A brewery might justify custom code only if its process is genuinely unusual: high-volume contract manufacturing across many client brands, for example, where a packaged platform's data model doesn't fit. Even then, the documented cases run vendor tools modified around the edges rather than software built from scratch. Regulatory filing requirements change over time, and a self-built system means someone on staff owns that compliance risk permanently, with no vendor support line to call when a form changes. Spreadsheets can still help with one-off planning, but the real risk is treating them as the system of record for excise tax and lot traceability.
When buying makes sense
Buying is the right call for nearly every producer. Ekos, Breww, Beer30 and OrchestratedBEER already carry the TTB workpapers, keg fleet tracking and QuickBooks or Xero sync that a producer needs on day one, and pricing scales with volume rather than headcount. Breww prices by hectolitres produced, starting under $35 a month for breweries under 200 hL a year, well below what a single developer-month of custom software would cost. Pick a vendor by production volume and the specific modules you'll actually use: a wine or spirits operation needs different bulk and additive tracking than a beer producer, and small operations may not need the multi-facility features Professional tiers add. Keep a spreadsheet for the odd forecasting exercise, but let the vendor's ledger be the record TTB and your accountant rely on.
The desk read
Build-versus-buy analysis for Brewery, Distillery & Craft Beverage Production is being written. In the meantime, the framework that drives every B4 call is on the B4 Index page.
Frequently asked
How much does brewery management software cost?
Pricing usually scales with production volume rather than user count. Breww charges by hectolitres produced, starting under $35 a month for breweries making less than 200 hL a year. Beer30 publishes starting tiers from $118 a month, and Ekos prices by quote, typically in the tens to low hundreds of dollars a month depending on the modules you need.
Can I just run my brewery on spreadsheets and QuickBooks?
Some breweries do keep spreadsheets alongside their production system for ad hoc planning, but nobody has documented replacing the TTB and keg tracking system itself with spreadsheets. A missed excise filing or an untracked keg costs far more than a subscription ever would.
Does craft beverage software handle TTB reporting automatically?
Yes, and it's the main reason producers buy rather than build. Ekos lists TTB reporting as a core platform feature, and Beer30 markets making TTB reporting as simple as a few clicks, which removes manual transcription errors.
What's different between beer, wine and spirits production software?
The core (recipes, batches, inventory, TTB reporting) is shared, but wine needs bulk purchasing and additive tracking, and spirits needs different proof and barrel-aging logic. Ekos offers separate feature sets by beverage type rather than one generic template across all three.