Many home brewers dream of someday selling their production on a larger scale.   A brewery is an extremely capital intensive business. Unless one is lucky enough to have a large personal fortune, the hopeful brewer will likely require some sort of outside financing, such as by crowdfunding, private investors or a loan from a financial institution. The industry has benefited a great deal from loans made through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 7a program.  Well-known breweries, such as Dogfish Head Brewery of Delaware and New Belgium Brewing of Colorado, have used these types of loans to buy equipment to produce beer, which can quickly run over $500,000 for a barrel production system of significant scale. Over the past five years, the SBA has provided backing for loans to hundreds of craft breweries.  For more information on how the SBA 7a program works with SBA-approved lenders to provide financing, click here.