Brewery collaboration agreements 

Collaboration agreements between brewers ought not be rare. Whilst we do not have the data, anecdotally we know that the clients we have spoken to have not had them in place causing unnecessary brew-delays.

To organise a brew of significant volume, it can be quite costly and a miss in branding or execution can make the whole deal problematic. Further, continued collaboration is even more complicated than a one off because so much is at stake.

If you are starting up a brewery (or about to begin collaborating with another brewer) it may help to sit down and workshop some ideas. Those ideas should then, ideally (see what we did there) go into a working document that governs how the collaboration is about to go ahead.

Brewers are artists - there is no doubt (don’t even get me started on the debate between a stout and a stout porter) and managing the vision of two artists and the finances and logistics of two companies (or just two people) can be complicated work.

The agreement should set out some basics:

• the number of brews
• the volume
• where the brewing will take place
• will both brewers be onsite making the beer or just collaborate on the recipe?
• who is paying for ingredients and the work (the capital investment)
• how are the profits to be shared
• what is the style and philosophy behind the brew
• The sourcing of ingredients - where, how, and what does that say
  
• the co-branding policy - the marketing
• the intellectual property including branding
• the supply chain

The team at Forty Four can assist you in organising a brewery collaboration agreement. They are a simple way of putting in place your brew pre-nup; the document that governs how you protect you and your brew-partner if things go sour (yes, sour ale joke, right there).

We bring to the mix the following:

• A great tech lawyer who can assist in the space between regulation and technology
• A brewing consultant with postgraduate brewing qualifications from Federation University
• The lawyer who has acted for breweries, brewers, and brewpubs alike.

Get in touch with us and see what we are wort (ok, I’ll stop with the puns, I promise).