Where the work happens

The property in this estate least likely to be legal in a home kitchen, and it is worth knowing that early.

A licensed premises, usually

Most states require a food processing establishment license and an inspection for beverage production, and frequently a plan review before you begin.

A refrigerated or unpasteurized product attracts more scrutiny than a shelf-stable one, reasonably.

Which makes the premises question the first practical decision rather than a later one.

What the space needs

Hot and cold water, a proper sink arrangement, and floors and surfaces that can be cleaned and drain.

Separation between raw material handling and filling, because filling is the contamination step.

Ventilation and a heat source.

Somewhere to sanitize bottles.

And for a fermented product, a space that holds a stable temperature, since fermentation rate is temperature.

Cold storage is the constraint

The item that decides how big the business can be.

Cold for raw materials, cold for the process, cold for finished stock, and cold for retained samples.

It is expensive, it runs continuously, and it fills up faster than any other resource in a beverage operation.

Plan it against the finished stock you intend to hold, not against the batch you intend to make.

The cottage food question

Cottage food laws exist for low-risk shelf-stable products, and most exclude beverages and nearly all exclude anything requiring refrigeration.

So the home-kitchen route available to a jam maker is generally not available here.

The usual answers are a shared or commissary kitchen, a co-packer, or a small licensed unit, and a shared kitchen is the one that most often works, provided it can give you cold storage.

References