Production & TTB for breweries
A brewery plant is set up from its Brewer’s Notice number under Production → Plan → Add a plant. Its records are kept in barrels (31 gallons), the unit TTB uses for every brewery report. A brewery and a distillery on the same account each have their own plant: a switch at the top of Production moves between them.
The brewery screen has three tabs: Floor, Reports and Setup.
Setup
- Tanks. Add your fermenters, brite tanks and serving tanks.
- Opening balances. If you have filed reports before, enter line 33 of the last one: what was in each tank, and each size of keg and case, on the last day of that month (or quarter, for a quarterly filer). Brand new? Skip this and start recording. Your first report starts at zero.
- Reports and tax.
- Operations report: monthly (TTB F 5130.9), or quarterly if your beer tax is $50,000 a year or less.
- Excise return: semimonthly, quarterly ($50,000 or less a year) or annual ($1,000 or less a year).
- Beer tax rate: a domestic brewer making 2,000,000 barrels a year or less pays $3.50 on its first 60,000 barrels in the calendar year, then $16. Any other brewer pays $16 on its first 6,000,000, then $18. Until you choose, the tax is figured at the highest rate, $18.
- The 60,000 barrels are one allowance for all your breweries and any you control or are controlled with. With more than one brewery, enter each one’s share.
- Barrels you removed taxable earlier in the year, before your records here began, count toward the year’s 60,000. Enter them too.
The Floor
Record what happened, in your own words:
- Beer finished fermenting: the barrels in the tank when fermentation is done. This is “beer produced” (line 2). Wort is not beer yet.
- Kegged / Canned or bottled: from which tank, how many of each size. The keg and case sizes convert to barrels by TTB’s own table (27 CFR 25.156, 25.158). If you drew more than you packaged, the difference is a loss.
- Beer left: sold or shipped, to your taproom, exported, to your other brewery, drunk on the premises outside the taproom, lab samples, destroyed or lost. Each goes to its own line. Sales and taproom beer are taxed; beer drunk on the premises outside the taproom is not. A sale names the buyer, except half a barrel or less sold at the brewery.
- Kegs or cases came back, received in bond, moved tank to tank, added water, and counted / gauged for the monthly inventory. A count that differs from the book is an overage or a shortage.
Every record can be undone until its period is filed. A record whose beer has since been used (kegs already sold) is undone after the later record.
Reports
Pick a period to see:
- TTB F 5130.9, every line in every column, with line 1 carried from the last report and line 34 checked against line 13.
- TTB F 5130.26, for a quarterly filer.
- The beer excise figures: taxable barrels after beer returned the same day is taken off (27 CFR 25.159(b) — not if you were indemnified for that tax or do not credit the customer within 30 days, 25.159(c)), the tax at your rate, and the due date. Returned beer that day’s removals could not absorb is shown, in barrels, as relief to claim separately.
A period that would close below zero must be fixed first. Mark a period filed after you file it with TTB. Periods are filed in order, and a filed period is closed to new records and undo.
Ask PLUG
Ask PLUG what is in your tanks, how much beer is packaged, or when your next report is due. It reads the same records and never records for you.