There's the big four breweries (Miller, Coors, Pabst, and Anheuser-Busch) and then micro-breweries. However, are there breweries between these two? Ones that have national distribution and of a size in between these two? In other words, "medium" size breweries? Possibly ones that are on the decline, rise, or reaches a large size but have no desire to become as big as the big four. If there's many that are viewed this way, is there an online list of them? Or an online list that includes all sizes of breweries but is set up in such a way that medium-size ones are identified? Links would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
As a general rule, there are fewer and fewer breweries falling between those two extremes anymore. This can generally be credited to the enormous success of Bud/Miller/Coors in the 1970s to the present in capturing an ever-greater share of the market through advertising, distribution control, etc.
Typical examples: In Baltimore the last of the large local breweries was a Heilemann brewery outside the beltway that, as I recall, had an annual capacity of about 600,000 barrels, and was running FAR below that capacity when it was closed in the 1990s. As I recall, the major Anheuser-Busch breweries--twelve of them scattered through America--produce about 1.5 to
2.2 million barrels EACH per year. So the local regional mass-market breweries (think Stroh's, Wiedemann, National Premium, etc.) are/were way too big for the product demands of today's lackluster or comatose small-brand beers, while also being WAY too big for microbreweries. (Staying in the same region, Frederick Brewing in Frederick, Maryland, a microbrewery built about the same time as the Baltimore Heilemann plant closed, has an annual capacity of about 60,000 barrels, and is currently running at about half that capacity in spite of contract-brewing for several regional Ohio brands.)
Perhaps the largest "regional" brewery out there might be the newly-built Yuengling brewery outside Pottstown, Pa.; I think that the annual capacity of the old and new breweries is somewhere around 1 million barrels.
Several folks wondered why a microbrewery didn't buy that Baltimore brewery; it would have been like buying a C-130 hangar to park your car.
Painfully true, and a lot of regionals have gone by the wayside.
I clipped the part mentioning some of the regionals, but not for lack of merit. Not just Stroh's, Wiedemann, and National Premium went by the wayside, but they're as good a set of examples as any. Some of the brands still live on, though; Blitz-Weinhard's Henry Weinhard's brand and Rainier's lager are still brewed in one form or another. It doesn't really matter whether Miller or Pabst owns the brands, since they're brewed by Miller anyway.
Could be. Another sizeable medium-sized regional is High Falls, brewing the Genesee and JW Dundee's brands, along with a few others. F.X. Matt, with its own Saranac brand and its contract brews (including some for Brooklyn Brewing and Pete's) would also qualify as a surviving medium- sized regional. Perhaps the Lion Brewery in Pennsylvania might count as well, having survived while seeing 28 of its area competitors go by the wayside. San Francisco's Anchor Brewing could be considered another regional, and New Orleans's Dixie brewery, still hanging on, qualifies.
Buying a brewery and running it at 10% of capacity would have meant certain doom, and things are tough enough as it is.
Some of the startups from the early years of the microbrewery boom are still around, and are getting to the point of being medium-sized regionals. The most obvious one might be Boston Brewing/Sam Adams, which took over a former regional brewer's plant in Ohio. Others that have grown to sizeable production volumes include the likes of Sierra Nevada and Redhook.
The Pacific Northwest states no longer have any old-line regional brewers, after the shutdowns of Blitz-Weinhard and Rainier. The "big" producers in the region now include the likes of Redhook, Widmer, and Pyramid (including Portland Brewing). All the big-brewery beers come from elsewhere, mostly California and Colorado, with the exception of a couple of Henry's beers contract-brewed by Full Sail. It isn't a bad situation, except perhaps from the employment point of view; the big brewers had a few more people working there than the microbrewers do.
I prefer Microbreweries over commercial beer anyway, Anchor Steam is OK but some are much better. The quality of beer is better compaired to commercial beers.
Sierra Nevada is an option I like, Sam Adams was actually contracted out to a brewer however they may brew their own now. Redhook has the nickname, Budhook since evidently Bud made a deal with Redhook to help them mass produce their product. Locals say that Redhook does not taste the same and the quality has gone down.
A long time ago I purchased a Weinhard that had a Sam Adams cap, so there is a lot of regional brewing help going on. Full Sail was one of my favorites, for some reason does not taste the same since they are now employee owned. This could be that other Microbrewies are now better. I think this is a better situation for consumers who want quality however the cheap beers with no quality have gone under. Some microbrewies are union, this may benefit new the employees, everyone ia aware that Bud has a union.
Nobody's giving their beer away for free. They're all commercial beers.
And micro is not a guarantee of better quality over large. I've had beer from some microbreweries that was absolutely heinous. I've had beer from some enormous breweries that was most excellent (they don't happen to be North American breweries, however).
Size of the brewery has no bearing at all on the quality of the beer. Period.
And they are now, in fact, quite a large brewery. As big as, maybe even bigger than, some of the old-line regional breweries.
They do own a brewery in Cincinnati, but still do a fair amount of contract brewing. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've never understood so many beer geeks' bias against contract brewing. If the beer's good, I don't care where it comes from.
Yes and no. It's a distribution deal, strictly.
It's also scheduled to end very soon now.
And that's Redhook's own fault. Bud has no involvement at all with the brewing operations.
(And I can find locals who'll say Redhook was never all the impressive to begin with.)
I fail to see how ownership structure or union/non-union has any impact on the quality of the beer. Good beer is determined by two things: the quality of the recipe and ingredients, and the control over the process to ensure consistent results. That can be accomplished under any ownership structure and any employee structure.
The idea that certain types of businesses are incapable of brewing good beer is a well-entrenched one in beer circles, and it's one that needs to die a very quick and unmerciful death.
Here's a question I have to anybody who is familiar with contract brewing. Who is responsible for buying (and checking the quality of) the ingredients. Is it the microbrewery or the contract company? And who oversees the brewing process to ensure quality and to make sure that the beer is consistent from batch to batch?
I think part of the bias about contract brewing comes from the idea that a microbrewer sends a recipe to the contractor and the contractor is responsible for the whole process.
There is a history in brewing of companies looking to buy cheaper supplies as they get larger. If a privately owned brewer sells stock and becomes publicly owned, it's easier to boost profits by lowering supply costs than it is to boost demand.
In the brewpub movement, it became easy to distinguish by tasting the beer between who opened a brewpub because he cared about beer and he wanted to share his passion with the public, and who opened one because he was opening a restaurant and he saw (in the '90s) that a brewpub was value-added. This perception might be the same one in brewing company size: a smaller brewing company cares about beer more.
By your opinion, my opinion is that if a brewery commercially advertises Nationally on TV and Radio, there is commercialization. Microbrews are successful by word of mouth because of quality.
This is why only the word of mouth microbrews spread through out the country because they're a better product than commercial beer.
Have you ever brewed? I prefer small batch brew over large batches the quality is noticable to me.
Sierra Nevada is popular because of their word of mouth quality, also they crack their barley grains right before mashing. Unlike commercial breweries that use rice and corn adjuncts.
Beer geeks who brew know the difference!
We can agree on this, my difference in opinion may be that Redhook should have inquired with Anchor Steam or others to see how they kept up with demand and quality (or with out loosing quality) rather than helping or giving in to a commercial company. Commercial breweries are not concerned about real quality only what they can influence one to think quality is by their psych influenced large scale advertising.
impressive to
I have only heard the opposite but this is possible.
I agree only "change" from one to the other may affect the difference in quality.
From some of the specifics I've known about various contract brewing arrangements, the answer is that there is no one answer. I've known some contract breweries that specify that you use their ingredients, especially their yeast. I've known some contract breweries that go to great lengths to work with the parent breweries' specifications and standards. It depends on the individual contracts.
Of course, the larger a share of business you provide to a contract brewery, the more clout you're going to wield. Someone the size of BBC is going to have quite a bit of sway and ability to demand that their product be brewed the way they wish.
You'd be surprised to find that the companies who do that aren't necessarily who you suspect. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, spends a lot on very high-quality ingredients. This is something that many beer geeks just refuse to accept. A-B brews Bud the way they do not because they're cheap. They do it because it's what sells, and what many people enjoy. They brew that recipe deliberately, and they don't scrimp on it.
An assertion I patently disagree with. Small does not mean more concern. I've encountered enough small breweries where people don't give a shit about the beer, and it shows. Size is simply not a reliable predictor of a brewery's quality.
There is commercialization if you put your name on a tap handle. There is commercialization if you sell your beer in any bar or any store outside your brewery. There is commercialization when you put your name on a label. There is commercialization when you put your name on a beer mat. There is commercialization when you have neon signs created with your name.
The defintion of "commercial" in this context means you produce something and sell it for money. Scale doesn't enter into it. Craft breweries are every bit as commercial as the big breweries. They just aren't commercial on the same scale.
You honestly thing Sierra Nevada or Anchor wouldn't do national TV advertising if they had the income to support it?
Craft beers are successful for any number of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with quality. There are successful craft beers that are of dubious quality. There are many defunct craft breweries that brewed outstanding beer. Simply producing a good product is not enough to guarantee success, in any business.
Yes, I have. Did for several years.
By this logic, the best beer is going to be brewed a gallon at a time, and there are diminishing returns the larger you go. By this logic, the lousy-to-mediocre brewpub down the street from me should be of better quality than Sierra Nevada. The premise is absurd on its face.
I'll throw one question that has no bearing on the discussion (whether or not I've brewed has nothing to do with being able to evaluate the quality of beer) with one that's only slightly more relevant: Have you ever been the Europe? Because there are some very large breweries over there that brew beers that most small American breweries would give their left nut to brew.
Belgian breweries use corn adjuncts. British breweries use corn adjuncts. And I don't know of many, if any, breweries that don't mill their grain shortly before brewing.
And SN is indeed successful through a lot of word-of-mouth. They also are good marketers.
To be blunt. Bullshit. Some of the best evaluators of beer I've run across don't brew. And I've known plenty of homebrewers who couldn't identify their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to beer quality.
Less perjoratively, I've sat through many blind tastings where people who were convinced they could tell a difference between beers (based on various criteria) in fact could not.
And, again, if someone's brewing a good beer, who the hell cares where it's from?
Bollocks. If you're in business, you try to make money as best you can. If Redhook's distribution-only agreement with A-B had succeeded in spreading popular acceptance of craft beer, American beer geeks would be walking around with giant stiffies every time Redhook's name was mentioned. Because the agreement didn't end up working out for Redhook, they become an easy whipping boy.
By the way, Anchor has not kept up with demand and quality. Anchor Steam deteriorates ridiculously rapidly, and is a vastly different beer in the Bay Area as opposed to anywhere else. The other Anchor beers fare a bit better, but not much. I love Anchor, but they are the last brewery I would go to for advice on how to preserve quality as you widen your distribution.
Large-scale breweries are sure as hell concerned about quality. They would not be in business if they weren't and they only need to look back at Schlitz in the mid 1970s to see what happens when you fall asleep at the quality switch. When have you ever heard of an infected Miller or Bud? When have you ever heard of an off batch of Coors?
The majors are obsessed with quality. Just becuase you don't like the product they're making doesn't mean it's not of quality. Their craftsmanship is outstanding. They're devoting that attention into what I think is a wholly uninteresting product, but just because I don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't have quality. I think the new Rolls Royce looks like shit, but that hardly means it's not a quality car.
Technically speaking, Pabst is no longer a brewery (nor is it really in the company of those other three). Pabst is strictly a marketing company now; all of its beers are contract-brewed, mostly by SAB Miller.
Of course. If you want to be literal, a microbrewery is defined as one that brews fewer than 15k barrels a year. Numerous craft breweries outpace that, like Boston Beer Co., Sierra Nevada, Anchor.
Plus, there are still several old regional breweries that still operate. Some examples of those have been mentioned in other posts.
See the more prominent craft breweries. Sam Adams (brewed by Boston Beer Co.) has nationwide distribution. Sierra Nevada pretty much does as well. Anchor's close. And even smaller breweries are coast-to-coast, if not in every state, like Stone from San Diego or Victory from Pennsylvania.
Do some googling. If you found a list of the 10 or 20 largest American breweries, you'd find 6 or 16 other than your four largest that would fit those criteria.
This perception of commercialism is word of mouth and reputation not high cost advertising during a Super Bowl with cartoon frogs!
No they would not, I'm convinced they would not sell out.
I have a bridge on the west coast here near Anchor Steam Brewing, do you want to buy it?
(whether or
I have brewed 15 gallon batches nonetheless I prefer five gallon batches. I like the Trappist Beers from Europe, they're brewed like microbrew here and I would even like to go on a tour if possible.
commercial
adjuncts.
Belgium and the UK have commercial breweries as well as every other country in the world, all commercial advertising breweries take short and expense cuts using adjuncts. I would hope they all crack their grains before mashing but most commercial brewers do not.
understood
identify their
If you put a good quality word of mouth microbrew next to any Sam Adams, I guarantee you I would be able to tell the difference. This could include any commercial advertising Brewery in the USA, they can not compete with any good word of mouth microbrew.
"Who... cares cares where it's from"... what is in it... etc...? I want to know where the beer was brewed, what is in it, etc... because I care about my health.
spreading
walking
The brewers at Redhook did not need to expand when they did with Bud, they were doing just fine in fact could not meet the demand. They made the deal with Bud because of greed not necessity. A lot of other microbrewies may have considered them a sell out. In fact there are some microbreweries in the Bay area that turned down offers from Bud and Miller. With all the new Microbrews I have not bothered to drink an Anchor lately... you may be right. Is Mayflower still alive?
The way the commercial brewers brew and sell what they think is quality is an off batch way of business in my opinion. I had a vinegar tasting Coors in the eighties and have not drank one since.
craftsmanship
doesn't mean
Agree I do not like the way they brew or their finished product, it may be quality by their definition of quality, obiously not anywhere else not even the beer review sites on the internet.
"> I have brewed 15 gallon batches nonetheless I prefer five gallon
Be careful with what you write, or you might end up writing black and white in one sentence.
The Trappist brewery at Westmalle, was since +/- 1990 the only brewery in Belgium, with Stella Artois in Leuven, where they had the new type of mashtun ( if that word could still be used - extractor is probably more apt) that is so efficient that the malt doesn't need to be crushed; the full maltgrains with the peels and everything are completely fine-grinded to powder. No more filterbed necessary. That's your microbrewery. BTW, production is 125.000hl/year.
Brouwerij Slaghmuylder, most famous for its "Witkap" beers, has always used a portion of cornflour in its mash. They're a small, commercial brewer. Production is 80.000hl/year, there's a lot of USA "microbrewers" that produce more annualy.
The only microbrewer that wouldn't give his left nut for being able to advertise on TV, is the one that is already producing more than he really could.
Honestly. This guy is so perfect he's almost gotta be a troll. If he is, he's a good one.
-- Lew Bryson
formatting link
Author of "New York Breweries" and "Pennsylvania Breweries," 2nd ed., both available at The Hotmail address on this post is for newsgroups only: I don't check it, or respond to it. Spam away.
Current production is probably about 1.5, 1.6 million bbls. Their current capacity, with the old brewery, the new brewery, and the Tampa brewery, is up around 3 million, and they have room to expand that further.
Wickedly inefficient, ayup.
-- Lew Bryson
formatting link
Author of "New York Breweries" and "Pennsylvania Breweries," 2nd ed., both available at The Hotmail address on this post is for newsgroups only: I don't check it, or respond to it. Spam away.
Eh? I can pick up local papers in my city and see plenty of adverts places by local craft breweries. Word of mouth and reputation is nice, but once a brewery grows to a certain size, that isn't enough to pay the bills, so they have to engage in some form of marketing.
Guess again. Nice little idealist world you live in, but it's not reality.
So you're not capable of addressing his argument, and have to be stupid about it? You're not even bright enough to know that there's no such thing as "Anchor Steam Brewing." You don't have room to imply that someone else is stupid.
Once again, you don't even bother to answer the question. And what you do as a homebrewer has little to do with brewing beer as a business, as many a homebrewer has learned the hard way.
You also don't know much about the Trappist breweries. Two of them are, in fact, sizeable operations, barely qualifying as "microbreweries" at all.
Eh? You've never seen print ads for SN?
This, Zippy, is what we English-speakers call a "non-sequitur." The vast majority of brewing enterprises don't mill their malt until it's time to add it to the mash. And it has nothing to do with adjuncts.
Exactly. Hey, you must be one of those folks from the "reality-based" community.
Um, no. It's against the law to use adjuncts in Germany, yet there are several big breweries that advertise quite a bit. They also do a lot of point-of-sale marketing with beer-mats, signs, glassware, and loads of other stuff.
Right. They wait 'til after the mash.
I'd love to take you up on this, because I'd be laughing my head off as you proved yourself wrong.
So now you're assuming what other people are thinking, based on their words? Don't put words in other people's mouths. All it does it reveal the paucity of your argument, as you build your own little strawman.
Bwahahahaha! So big deal. If Boston Brewing's beer states plainly on the label that it was brewed in Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, Washington (as it was at one time), and it's brewed with exactly the same stuff at either location, using the same methods, what's the difference?
And what guarantee do you have that some random microbrewer's beer is "healthier" than some other random not-so-microbrewer's beer?
Actually, were it not for that agreement, Redhook would be toast by now. They expanded way too quickly, and it's pretty much A-B that's saved their bacon and kept them in business. But you're right in that the agreement was very much a mixed blessing for Redhook.
Incorrect. They wanted to fund market expansion. The management at the brewery saw what they thought was an opportunity to increase their distribution reach, and at the same time, by raising money on the public market, they could fund that reach.
Wow! I'm impressed! You've actually seen Redhook's internal company communications and know this for a fact? You're not, in fact, just talking out of your ass?
What "a lot of other microbreweries" though about Redhook's business is irrelevant. And which other microbreweries would those be, hmm?
Really? Which ones?
Yes, and those black helicopters with A-B's logo are monitoring your beer-drinking habits, citizen. It's best for all if you just obey.
Your opinion and a dollar will still be short of what's needed to buy a pint of microbrew at my local. The big megabrewers aren't holding a gun to anyone's head. They make the stuff they make, and for whatever reason (ones I can't quite fathom, either), people buy and drink the stuff. So, while I have no interest in the bland stuff the big brewers make, someone does, and that's why they control 90+% of the market in the USA.
"Not anywhere else" ?? Do you have any concept of the science behind quality control? There are plenty of professional publications that go into detail on the strict quality control procedures at Anheuser-Busch. They simply can't afford screwups and inconsistent product.
As far as "the beer review sites on the internet," spare me. The people posting to those sites are a self-selecting sample of people who, for the most part, have an interest in specialty beers. The average Joe Sixpack isn't likely to bother with ratebeer.com at all. What Joe Sixpack is looking for is a mild-tasting product that tastes hardly at all of what a lot of people think beer should taste like, and he wants is a product that is consistently like that. I don't care for it, as is the case with a lot of the people who talk about beer on Usenet and the Web-based review sites, but I'm also aware that I've self-selected myself out of the mass beer market - at least in the United States and Canada. In Germany, I'd drink a mass-market beer without much in the way of hesitation at all.
Your preference for microbrews (or mine or anyone else's, FTM) does not equate to "quality." Quality, in production terms, is measured in terms of product consistency, and in strict adherence to processes that guarantee that product's consistency. The typical microbrewery beer is often widely variable in quality; for those of us that like them, we generally don't have a problem with that, as long as they fall more or less in the range we've chosen to like.
Anheuser-Busch is a brewery. Budweiser is its flagship brand. A-B made a deal with Redhook that involved A-B buying some equity (in the form of stock), thus investing in Redhook. In return, Redhook was guaranteed access to A-B's huge, well-developed distribution network. That's where Redhook gets the "Budhook" handle.
Redhook beers definitely don't taste the same as the inconsistent beers they were making 22 years ago. The quality, however, has not gone down. More people are drinking Redhook than 22 years ago, but again, in production terms, quality is defined in termed of an ability to make a producting using a repeatable, consistent product. Redhook is able to do this. Their beers aren't as attractive to the beer geeks any more, and they don't compete in terms of strong flavors with some of the craft breweries' products that have come along since then, but Redhook does have a market niche. If they can make a profit more than two quarters in a row, they might even be on to something. I'm no longer as a big fan of their beers as I might have once been, but I'll still drink a Winterhook now and then.
But then, what do I know? I'm only a local.
Eh? Which microbreweries are union houses? Very few of them are that I know of.
"This perception of commercialism"? I have no idea what you mean.
But, regardless, "commercial brewery" means one that sells beer in exchange for money. Period. And they all advertise in some fashion. Except one that I know of: the Westvletern monestary doesn't put anything but a colored cap on their bottles. No labels, no signs, no nothing. They just sell the beer out of a window at the monestary.
Otherwise, every brewery that sells beer advertises in some fashion. It may not be on TV, but a tap handle, a sign, hell, even a name on a beer is an advertisement of some form. Or, if you want to be really picky, a promotion, of which advertising is a subset.
I'm convinced you're either very wrong, very naive, or quite possibly both. Both breweries already advertise. And anyone business owner that wouldn't look for a way to increase their business in an intelligent fashion probably shouldn't be in business - and likely won't be for long. I don't know Fritz Maytag or the owners at SN, but I'd be willing to be that if they thought if the cost of advertising would bring in enough new business to pay for the advertising as well as increase profits, they'd do it in a heartbeat. They may be good brewers, but they're also good businessmen.
Wow, that's one of the lamest retorts I've seen in a while. Why not just address the point? Or do you disagree that there are successful craft breweries that brew not-so-great beer, or that breweries that brewed great beer have gone belly-up despite their superior product?
As others have pointed out, at least a couple of the Trappist breweries are far from micro in scale. The largest is a very modern operation, and they're very commercial, advertising heavily in Belgium, and advertising on a limited basis in the States as well.
Not to mention, Germany has several enormous breweries that advertise like crazy and still manage to produce some damn good beer. Ditto the UK.
Bullshit. As another poster pointed out, that's patently illegal in Germany. And yet you can't run around various parts of Germany without seeing a Paulaner sign or the Jever logo on a top-league soccer team or Bitburger ads on the TV.
Fuller's advertises heavily in the UK. Guinness advertises heavily everywhere.
Not to mention, SN advertises. Anchor advertises. Goose Island advertises. And I'm not even talking tap handles and the like. I'm talking buying advertising space in newspapers, magazines, etc.
And, by the way, adjunct usage is not necessarily a shortcut or expense reducer. If you're as well-versed on homebrewing as you claiim to be, you should know that. You should know that English bitter is pretty much always brewed with a bit of corn or sugar. You should know that many Belgian beers are brewed with more than a bit of sugar.
It's what you do with the adjuncts, not the use of adjuncts, that can make a beer insipid.
Offer some evidence to support that claim, please.
How does that statement hold up in light of the fact that SN, Anchor, Goose and countless other craft breweries advertise? And don't change the parameters of your claim for a third time by now claiming that you're referring only to TV.
What on earth is possibly in any beer that's going to be detrimental to your health? That is, quite frankly, the stupidest argument I've ever heard.
The one remotely legit health argument that could be made is the frequently made claim that Budweiser gives many people nasty headaches. This claim is true. One chemical (and, no, it's not an added chemical, anymore than alcohol is an added chemical) that's present in Bud - acetaldehyde - is part of what causes the discomfort of a hangover in the first place, so the increased levels can make Bud hangovers even worse.
But here's the thing: the acetaldehyde has nothing to do with any adjuncts in that beer. It's a natural byproduct of their yeast (it's a natural byproduct of most yeasts, in fact, but that one churns it out like crazy in comparison). If you brewed an all-malt beer with that yeast, you'd still have the same problem.
For example?
"Not anywhere else"? Roughly 90 percent of beer drinkers in the U.S. would disagree with that statement. I don't like what they brew, either, but that doesn't mean it's not a quality product. It just means it's not an appealing product.
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