How to commercial microbreweries create new recipes?

What is the process/scale? Do they have 5-10gal homebrew style setups in the brewery and just try new recipes whenever they get free time between/during large brews?

I think it varies from brewery to brewery but many use something like a RIMS system to keep things consistent. Most microbreweries were started by people who homebrew. A lot of larger breweries have a research and development section who probably make new recipes or figure out how to make the beer taste the same with different ingredients (the price of ingredients can fluctuate and the ibu of hops can vary even from the same type of hop).

In the beer wars movie, they showed Sam from Dogfish Head brewing up a batch on a really nice single tier 3 keggle rig. All polished keggles. I'd guess they all do it like that.. small batches, tweaking, than larger scale production.

I do not have first hand knowledge of the process, but from what I have read and assumed over the years, most breweries have pilot brew systems, which are similar to large home brew setups. I know Sabco is now marketing the brew magic this way. Once the brewer is happy with a recipe at this scale, they may then do a single run on the regular brew system and release as a special beer or tasting room only product. Depending on public reaction, it may make its way to a seasonal or full time release.

There is a brewery near me that says at all their tours that they used to brew test batches on small scales but now just brew directly on the large system.

When asked what they do if a batch doesn't turn out the way they expect, they respond "Sell it".

It depends on the scale of the brewery.

When I was brewing on 7-15 bbl brewpub sized systems, I used my 10 gallon HB system for pilot brews. Some packaging micros have a little larger system.

Odell Brewing has a 3 bbl pilot system. Coors Brewing used to use a 25 bbl pilot brewery that was a scaled down version of the big kettles. They would only use the "best" 10 bbls to ferment. They even had a short Krones line to fill bottles.

Nowadays, the Blue Moon Brewery in Coors Field is used for test brews.

Brewing R&D at Coors did have a "pico" brewery. One of the guys at the fab shop built a 5 gallon, high pressure steam, brewkettle. The first time they turned it on, it evaporated all the water in the kettle.

They did fit it with pressure reducers. They fermented in modified Corney kegs in a commercial reach-in cooler to maintain temps.

I live down the street from Dogfish Head brewery. If you go to the Resturant they ALWAYS have an experimental batch that they make on a much smaller scale. They use it get the public reaction. The batches that go over well are sometimes made into BIG Batches.

DogFish head uses the BrewMagic pilot brewery system. Others do too, but I have not seen a list of who.

I believe Rogue, Stone, and a few others use the B3 2050 and smaller systems.

Some smaller breweries still use the cooler system they got started on for test batchin' but, not many FWIH.

Still for several, a "pilot batch" starts at 5bbls.