Brewery

A brewery is a facility that produces beer. Typically a brewery is divided into distinct sections, with each section reserved for one part of the brewing process. Breweries can take up multiple city blocks, or be a collection of equipment in a homebrewer's kitchen. The diversity of size in breweries is matched by the diversity of processes, degrees of automation, and kinds of beer produced in breweries.

Beer industry definitions

Breweries range widely in the volume and variety of beer produced, ranging from tiny microbreweries that produce a few dozen barrels a year, to massive multinational conglomerates, such as InBev, that produce billions of barrels annually. The most commonly used definitions of breweries are the following, which are used by the U.S. craft beer industry:

Related Topics:
Microbreweries - Barrel - InBev - Billion

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• Microbrewery – A small brewery with an annual production of less than 15,000 barrels (17,600 hectoliters) of beer per year. Microbreweries typically distribute through a wholesaler in a traditional three-tier system, act as their own distributor and sell to retailers and/or directly to the consumer through a tap room, attached restaurant, or off-premise sales.
• Brewpub – A restaurant-brewery whose beer is brewed primarily for sale in the restaurant and bar, and most of its beer is sold on site. If the amount of beer that a brewpub distributes off-site beer exceeds 75%, it is usually recategorized as a microbrewery.
• Contract brewing company – A business that hires another brewery to produce its beer. The contract brewing company generally handles all of the beers marketing, sales, and distribution, while leaving the brewing and packaging to the producer-brewery (which, confusingly, is also sometimes referred to as a contract brewer).
• Regional brewery – A large brewery with the a brewing capacity between 15,000 and 2,000,000 barrels (18,000 to 2,300,000 hectoliters).
• Regional specialty brewery – A regional brewery whose flagship brand is an all-malt or specialty beer or whose production is 50% or greater of craft beer. For example, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and Magic Hat Brewing Company are regional specialty breweries.
• Craft brewer – A brewpub, microbrewery, regional specialty brewery or contract brewing company whose majority of sales is considered craft beer.

Various appellations are applied to breweries making over two million barrels (2.3 million hectoliters) a year, not all of which are meant kindly. These include Macrobrewery, Megabrewery and Industrial Brewery, which can be seen as a direct contrast to "Microbrewery" and "Craft Brewery".

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