Brewing at every scale

Size words are not standardised

Microbrewery, craft brewery, regional brewery and macrobrewery are all in general use and none has an agreed definition across countries. Where thresholds exist they are set by trade bodies for their own membership or by governments for tax purposes, and they differ by an order of magnitude between jurisdictions.

So the useful question is not which label applies but what the scale makes possible. Below a certain volume a brewery sells mostly through its own taproom and local accounts, which permits short runs, unstable recipes and beer that will not survive a month. Above it the beer has to travel, which requires consistency, stability and packaging — and those requirements shape the liquid.

Where the brewing happens

A brewpub brews on the premises it sells from. That is the one venue word that makes a specific claim about the location of the kettle, and it is why brewpubs needed dedicated legalisation in the United States, where licensing separated production from retail.

A taproom is a bar attached to a brewery. The distinction from a brewpub is subtle and real: a brewpub is a pub that brews, a taproom is a brewery that sells. Both are driven by the same economics — selling directly returns far more per litre than selling through a wholesaler.

Contract brewing is having your beer made at somebody else's brewery, and it covers a wide range. At one end a brewer develops the recipe, supervises every brew and owns no plant; at the other a brand commissions beer to a brief with no brewing involvement at all. Both are legitimate and long-standing commercial arrangements, and they are very different things behind the same phrase.

"Cuckoo" or "gypsy" brewing usually describes the first — a brewer without premises using other people's equipment. The second term has fallen out of favour for obvious reasons and BeerHQ notes it because it is still encountered rather than because it should be used.

The missing middle

The regional brewery — large enough to supply a county or a state, small enough to be locally owned — was historically the backbone of the trade in most brewing countries, and it is the part that has thinned most.

The reasons are structural. A regional brewery is too small to compete on distribution and advertising with an international group, and too large to survive on taproom sales and local accounts the way a microbrewery can. It sits in the one place where neither set of advantages applies.

That matters for what is available. The regional brewery is where a great many everyday styles lived — ordinary bitter, mild, regional lagers — and their decline is not really a story about taste.