Where a small kombucha brewery's week actually goes
Software pages usually open with an hours-saved figure. There is none here, because nobody has measured it for kombucha production. What follows is an estimate of the work itself, area by area, set out so it can be checked and corrected.
The batch log is not where the time goes
Asked where their admin time goes, most brewers point at the batch log. It is the visible paperwork: the clipboard next to the tank.
The arithmetic says otherwise. A reading takes a minute. Across first fermentation, a flavour split and a fill, one batch produces something like forty minutes of writing, so eight batches a month come to roughly five hours. That is real, but it is a small share of the total.
The larger share sits in work that has nothing to do with the tanks: stock that goes uncounted until an ingredient runs out mid-brew, quotes retyped as delivery notes and again as invoices, HACCP files reconstructed before an audit rather than kept current, and a month that has to reach the accountant in a form they will accept.
Six areas, one brewery
The same brewery, eight batches a month, counted by area instead of by batch. Every figure is an estimate.
- Batches, recipes and tank planning, about 5 hours. Brew sheets and readings, the flavour split with its juice and botanical lots, the fill with its lot codes, and working out which tank is free when.
- HACCP records and cleaning logs, about 4 hours. Acidification and alcohol documented per batch with the evidence behind them, and cleaning records kept up to date rather than recalled later.
- Stock, purchasing and the buy list, about 5 hours. Counting what is left, working out what the next month of brewing consumes, deciding what to reorder and writing the orders. This grows with every additional flavour.
- Quotes, delivery notes and invoices, about 6 hours. A wholesale order becomes a quote, then a delivery note, then an invoice, and in Germany increasingly a structured electronic invoice rather than a PDF. The same lines, entered up to three times.
- Cost per litre, yield and month-end, about 3 hours. What a finished bottle costs, what a batch actually yielded, and preparing the month for the accountant.
- Audit prep, recalls and training records, about 2 hours. Averaged over a year. Close to nothing in most months, and a full week when an audit is due.
What it adds up to
About 25 hours a month, or six hours a week. At 25 euros an hour that is around 625 euros of working time; at 40 euros it is 1,000. In a brewery this size the work is rarely a salaried role, so the cost usually lands on evenings rather than on a payroll line.
Different breweries will land somewhere different. The same six lines are on the homepage and can be adjusted there.
What software removes, and what it does not
Software does not do the underlying work. Readings still have to be taken, stock still has to be counted, prices still have to be decided. Any tool suggesting otherwise is describing something it cannot deliver.
What it removes is re-entry, assembly and arithmetic.
- Re-entry. A reading entered once appears in the batch, in the control point record and in the audit document, because all three are views of the same record rather than separate files kept in agreement by hand. A quote becomes a delivery note and then an invoice without being retyped.
- Assembly. HACCP records, delivery notes, invoices, structured e-invoices, accounting exports and a lot's full trace are generated from records that already exist.
- Arithmetic. Cost per litre, yield and loss, what a recipe consumes at a different volume, what to reorder against what is already committed, how much of a lot is unaccounted for.
The claim, then, is not that admin falls to zero. It is that the same fact is entered once rather than three times, and that the documents stop being separate work from the brewing.
The cost that appears on no list
One more item turns a difficult week into a difficult month: tracing a lot.
A customer calls about a single bottle. Answering means knowing which batch it came from, what went into that batch, what else came out of it and who else received any. Held in a notebook and several spreadsheets, that is an afternoon of cross-referencing under time pressure, which is where mistakes happen.
Certified sites face a deadline on top of that: an auditor can ask for the full picture of a lot during the audit itself, reconstructed from records kept months earlier, and a mock recall has to be run and documented on a schedule. Without certification the same question still arrives, just without the clock. Batch tracking and recall-ready records covers how that is built.
Why spreadsheets hold for so long, and then stop
Nearly every brewery starts in a spreadsheet, and for a while that is the right choice. It is free, it is familiar, and at two batches a month the copying is trivial. A paid market in kombucha log templates and printable HACCP forms exists precisely because so many producers are still there.
What breaks is not volume but relationships. A spreadsheet holds a list well and a link badly. Once one ferment becomes six products, each with its own lot numbers going to different customers, made from ingredients carrying their own lots and costs, what is needed is a connection between four of those lists. That is also why the six areas above resist being six separate tools.
Correcting these figures
The numbers here are estimates and would be better as measurements. Producers who keep these records are welcome to send what the work actually takes, to hello@braumo.com. With enough replies the figures will be replaced with measured ones and the sample size stated.
Related reading
- From order to invoice: the documents a wholesale delivery actually needs
- Kombucha batch tracking and recall-ready records
- The brew-day log: what to record, and why an auditor asks for it
- HACCP for kombucha: the two control points that matter
- From homebrew to commercial kombucha: what changes when you scale
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