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.
