300 W. Greenville West Drive
Greenville
616-204-2498
OWNERS: Chris Breimayer and Pat Breimayer
PSYCHO BREW CO-OWNER CHRIS BREIMAYER INSPECTS A LABEL THAT WILL GO ON A BREW KETTLE OR FERMENTATION TANK.
Michigan makes beer, but Michigan also makes stuff that makes beer.
The state is home to three companies that make and install brewing equipment, GW Kent in Ypsilanti, Craftwerk Brewing Systems in Lake Orion, and Psycho Brew in Greenville.
When one of the choices has a name like Psycho Brew, you didn’t really think I was going to write about GW Kent or Craftwerk, did you?
Chris Breimayer, who co-owns Psycho Brew with his brother, Pat, says the business is so named for a reason: “We have an unconventional way of doing things.”
Indeed, they do. Start with their history. Chris and Pat founded Psycho Brew in 2010 after two happy accidents. In 2008, Chris designed a ten-gallon brewing system and asked Pat to build it. It was no big deal for either of them as Chris has a background in architecture and the tool and dye industry, and Pat was at that time a millwright. Impressed with their own creation, they posted a photo of their system on a home brewing forum, Probrewer.com, as a “hey-look-what-we-did” lark.
That’s when the second happy accident occurred. A retired banker from Ohio saw the Breimayers’ system on the website and asked the brothers to build a custom one-barrel system for him. And then they got another email request to build a system. And another. “It was crazy,” Chris says. “We were nobody.”
A Psycho Brew employee inspects a seventy-five-gallon brew kettle.
Those requests made the Breimayers realize they had an opportunity to service a niche market: no other manufacturers of brewing equipment were making anything smaller than a 3.5-barrel system. In 2010, the brothers decided it was time to go into business officially, and they founded Psycho Brew, Michigan’s only manufacturer of nano-brewing equipment. Their decision to build nano-systems was a critical boost for small brewers everywhere, because at last they had affordable, space-saving alternatives.
Pat took over the fabrication side of the business, and Chris took charge of sales. For the first two years the business struggled from two problems that can kill any entrepreneur’s dream—poor sales and lack of facilities. Initially the two worked out of Chris’s garage in Greenville—until Chris’s wife decided it was time for them to go elsewhere. They moved the welding operation to an in-law’s pole barn but kept the drilling and other small work in the garage. But that meant a good deal of time was wasted running back and forth between locations.
Sales began to improve, but the brothers were still plagued with location issues: should they attempt to find more space locally, or was it time to move the operation? The decision was fairly easy. Pat and Chris gained space by farming out some of the welding operations to a nearby fabrication company and started renting space in a small industrial park just south of downtown Greenville. And instead of moving closer to Grand Rapids to take advantage of the resources of a big city, the Breimayers decided to stay in rural Greenville and conduct their business over the Internet. Unconventional, yes, but Chris says this is where they want to be.
The Breimayers aren’t the only people who think their business is unconventional. Chris says the brothers hear regularly from their accountant and banker about their, um, unusual business model. Nevertheless, it appears to be working. Unlike other businesses that take out loans in order to get big fast, Chris and Pat used their own money to avoid going into debt. And for the first three years, every dollar they made was reinvested in the business. Now Psycho Brew has nearly $3 million in sales annually.
Psycho Brew fermentation tanks ready to be shipped to customers.
Of course that’s small potatoes compared to some of Michigan’s other manufacturers of brewing equipment that supply big, well-known operations nationwide. But although Psycho Brew’s résumé isn’t nearly so impressive, it has supplied equipment to the Filling Station in Traverse City and Bad Brewing in Mason, among others. That’s Psycho Brew’s niche; the company provides brewing systems ranging from 2.5 up to 15 barrels to small brewers. Not only is the company filling a niche, it’s providing products small brewers can afford. Psycho Brew’s most expensive systems top out at around $22,000, while its nearest competitor’s much larger systems start at $60,000.
There’s one more unconventional aspect that sets Psycho Brew apart: the systems themselves. Because small brewers are often forced to do more with less, Psycho Brew’s systems are set up to brew double batches. The brewer can either blend the two batches into the same fermentation vat or brew two different beers at the same time. “As far as I know, there is nothing else like that out there,” says Chris.
Even though there’s not a big market for small systems, Psycho Brew’s reputation is growing and the brothers are selling everything as soon as they make it. Orders have come from as far away as Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe. Chris thinks he and Pat can ride this wave for another ten years.
“Really,” Chris says, “all we wanted to do was to sell enough so we had money to make beer.”
