2-8. What are the categories of brewers/breweries?
Description
This article is from the rec.food.drink.beer FAQ, by John Lock with numerous contributions by others.
2-8. What are the categories of brewers/breweries?
According to the Institute of Brewing there are four categories as
follows:
Large Brewers - Production in excess of 500,000 barrels/year
Regional Brewers - Production between 15,000 and 500,000 bbl/yr
Microbrewers - Production less than 15,000 bbl/yr
Brewpubs - Production for onsite consumption only
In addition you may see/hear the term pico-brewer which is used to
describe brewers so small that distribution is limited to pubs and
bars in their immediate area. To complicate matters their are
contract brewers. These companies develop a recipe and then "buy"
excess capacity at a large brewery to have their beer made for them.
They, then, market and distribute the finished product. Some of these
can be quite large. The Boston Beer Co., which brews the Sam Adams
line, is a good example of a large contract brewer.
To give you a better perspective here are some examples with 1993
production figures (barrels per year):
Large Brewers:
Anheuser-Busch - 93,000,000
Miller - 49,000,000
Coors - 25,000,000
Regional Brewers:
Boston Beer - 450,000
Sierra Nevada - 104,325
Anchor - 92,000
Pete's - 74,000
Microbrewers:
Summit - 10,500
Celis - 10,500
Yakima(Grant's) - 8,000
Brewpubs:
Wynkoop - 4,200
Gordon Biersch (No. 3) - 2,700
Great Lakes - 2,700
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