Czech firm brews up a way to make mobile breweries

PRAGUE — It has never been so easy to start your own beer company.

A Czech firm is selling professional beer-making sets that fit in a backyard but can produce commercial quantities of brew.

The mobile breweries sold by Well Service are a far cry from the kits typically made for home use. They cost $143,500, weigh 6,614 pounds and can generate 11,550 gallons of beer a year.

Pavel Pozivil, who started Well Service two years ago and delivered his first ready-to-go beer lab this year, said he wants to encourage the growth of craft beers in countries such as the United States, Britain, Italy and the Czech Republic.

“The whole world is flooded with these mainstream, large, industrial brewers,” Pozivil said. “We wanted to go against it with a beer people can brew themselves, that is unfiltered, unpasteurized and fresh.”

The equipment comes in a metal storage container that serves as a stand-alone workshop where a range of beers, from traditional lagers to wheat beer, ale and stout, can be brewed.

The cost includes five weeks of training with a brew master.

The typical owner, Pozivil said, would be a restaurant owner “who would like to brew decent beer and isn’t in a position to build his own brewery.”

But Well Service’s first customer was a regular beer lover who thinks there’s a gap in the market he can fill.

Vit Spacil joined forces with his brother Radek to start a backyard brewery on the outskirts of Prague. He wanted to produce a light ale that does not have a high alcohol content, unlike many of the local brews.

“We said, ‘Let’s do it,’ even though we didn’t plan to open a brewery in our garden,” Spacil said.

The first batch is due this month, but he has orders already coming in and expects to make back the money he spent in about three years.