BUSINESS & TECH | F E AT URE
START-UP STORIES Jerebrew
By Joshua Cawthorpe
T
his month, That’s talks to Jeremy Guillou about the process of starting a microbrewery in China. Two years ago, when some people were learning how to bake sourdough bread, Guillou began building Jerebrew and now bottles the lifeblood of his Guangdong community.
Can you tell me a bit about your background. Where did you grow up and when did you move to China? Do you have experience in breweries from before coming to China? Where did this passion begin? My background isn’t directly in brewing beer. My family on my mother’s side have a vineyard in my hometown of Nantes in France, so I grew up in the winery. I learned all about how to grow wine, make wine and sell wine. Making wine is a little more complicated than brewing beer. So, although I started brewing beer without real experience, I do have a background making other types of alcoholic beverages. The brewery has been officially open for one year and it was in development for about one year before. I moved to China 10 years ago. When I graduated in France, I traveled to New Zealand to improve my English. I was working for a year on a work-holiday visa and I actually met my wife there. She is from Zhongshan so after the trip I just moved to her hometown. Why did you chose to open a brewery in Zhongshan? Are there other breweries in the city? Zhongshan is a smaller city for Guangdong and it’s a “family city.” To open a business here for production was a good idea but, in terms of marketing the business, it’s a little bit limiting. My ambition is to expand out of Zhongshan in the next one or two years. Can you tell me a little bit more about the equipment requirements — were they 30 |DECEMBER 2021
easy to source in China? Right now, my maximum capacity is about 5,000 liters per month. I use a traditional way to brew without any chemicals or forced fermentation. I use a big cooling tank to keep the temperature stable, especially in Guangdong where it can be 35 degrees — as this is not very good for fermenting beer. I chose equipment to brew at smaller volumes so that I could easily brew small quantities of experimental beer. All of the equipment is made in China and it was easy to purchase for a reasonable cost. The total investment was about RMB200,000 as I was lucky to find a shop that didn’t need any major renovations. For Zhongshan the system is scalable. But to expand out of the area would be complicated with the current keg system. They are very heavy so, to expand out of the area, I might encouter problems with the delivery cost. However, it’s not an impossible problem to solve so I’ll find a solution when I need to. What is the target demographic for craft beer in your area? How do you market to your audience? We sell products in two ways — bottles and mini kegs. The latter I’ve been developing for a few months and it’s working very well. The mini keg has three sizes: 3L,7L and 10L. It comes with a bottle of CO2, which is about 60cm tall just like a soda water machine. Otherwise you couldn’t get to the bottom of a 7L keg. I sell the beer and I rent the tap system because it’s similar to what you would have in a bar with the handle, tap system and CO2 bottle. Selling all these pieces would be too expensive. If you keep it cold then it will be good for at least a month after you tap it. We like to say, 10 liters of beer in one month is not a big target for a person who likes beer. Our license doesn’t allow us to sell to a restaurant for resale. It’s the same license as a bar that brews its own beer. We don’t have a restaurant or pub attached to the brewery, but we do have a showroom for tasting. About 80% of our customers are
Chinese and 20% are foreigners. Aside from posting on WeChat, people find out about us through recommendations from friends. Like I said, the kegs are really useful for a person who just likes to drink beer. But usually this system is for bringing to a party or on a trip and it means that a lot of people can try the beer so the network grows fast. The dominant Chinese beer brands tend to be lower in alcohol than craft beer in western countries. Where do your products fall in comparison? My beers are between 5% to 8% ABV. There is a refraction tool where, according to the refraction of the light, it gives you the sugar content of the beer. You need to test it with the refractometer before and after fermentation and multiply the difference by 131 and that gives you a rate which corresponds to an alcohol percentage. What challenges did you encounter while starting a business in China? The first problem I had was the language barrier. My Chinese is fine for my daily life but it’s not good enough for administration. The first step was finding a person to help me register the company. Because it’s a food production license, they are very picky on the rules about cleaning and storage. The officers came three times over two months to give suggestions on how to improve. This part was a little bit complicated but not impossible — it just took time and money to renovate a little bit. On the other hand, it’s good to see that the authorities care about the cleanliness of food production. The rules are the rules and, from what I heard, it used to be a little bit corrupt. It was easy to give them some money and get the license without any real control. Now the situation is more transparent. It cost me about RMB20,000 to get the shop up to code so it’s not a lot of money. I even learned some things from the inspectors about how to optimize the sanitation so it was a very positive experience. > Scan the QR code below browse the Jerebrew selection of beers
