Microbrewery
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Image:Castle Rock Brewery - Nottingham - England - 2004-11-04.jpg A microbrewery is a term used to describe a small commercial brewery.
The term and trend originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s to describe the new generation of small breweries which had a focus on producing traditional cask ale. Though originally used to reflect the size of the breweries it gradually came to reflect an alternative attitude and approach to brewing of flexibility, adaptability, experimentation and customer service. The term and trend spread to the USA where it eventually was used to indicate a brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer annually.
The term is now falling out of favour as being misleading, especially in the USA where the term craft brewer is preferred.
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Microbreweries in America
In the early twentieth century, Prohibition drove many breweries into bankruptcy because they could not rely on selling "sacramental" wine as wineries of that era did. After several decades of consolidation of breweries, most American commercial beer was produced by a few very large corporations, resulting in a very uniform mild-tasting lager of which Budweiser is a well-known example. Consequently, some beer drinkers craving variety turned to homebrewing and eventually a few started doing so on a slightly larger scale. For inspiration, they turned to Britain, Germany, and Belgium, where a centuries-old tradition of artisan beer and cask ale production had never died out.
The popularity of these products was such that the trend quickly spread, and hundreds of small breweries sprang up, often attached to a bar (known as a "brewpub") where the product could be enjoyed. As microbrews proliferated, some became more than microbrews, necessitating the definition of the broader category of craft beer - high quality, generally all-malt, beer.
American 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.
July 2003 estimates published by the Association of Brewers show there are 366 microbreweries in the United States.
Microbreweries in other countries
Microbreweries are gradually appearing in other countries (such as New Zealand and Australia) where a similar market concentration exists. For example, microbreweries are flourishing in Canada, which (like the US) has a large domestic market dominated by large companies. Britain also has a large number of small commercial breweries making cask ale, the smallest of which are known as microbreweries and can be found in spaces as restricted as a single domestic garage. There is less of a divide between these and the giant companies, however, as breweries of all sizes exist to fill the gap.