Do Micro/Commercial Breweries Use Extract, Partial, or All-Grain Recipes?

The more and more I home brew the more I am interested in the microbrewing and commercial industry. I can only assume that most brewers started off using extracts and then eventually evolved into all-grain brewers. But are all microbreweries and commercial brewers all-grain brewers? Are there any well-known brewers that use extract/partial recipes?

Mostly all-grain, but there are a handful that use extract. Pacific Coast Brewing here in Oakland is one of them.

i think grain belt is partial.

They mostly are AG b/c they can get +90%

I think small brewpubs, and "brewpubs" whose license requires them to brew but who actually bring in most of their beer from a distributor or master facility sometimes have extract rigs. Most breweries I know of use all grain. For the level of QC and cost difference it just makes more sense to use an all grain process on the larger scale.

Granite City is a chain brew/restaurant (can't call them a pub as they have no pub food) and they bring in tankers of ready-made wort, and ferment on premises.

I believe Yuengling uses some liquid extract, but I don't know that it's considered partial mash like we think of it.

Yes.

I would think you could use extract but on my experience LME is 2.50lb where 2Row is ~1.00lb (less when bought in bulk)...So why? Why spend say $50-$80 (10g extract batch) when you could do $25-$40 (10g batches all grain)? Just would not make business sense to do it that way, thought I suppose you could, profits would be less.....

Also it would be much easier for the avg brewer to replicate your brew, because if I can clone it, and it tases the same, I wont buy yours!

The price you and I pay for LME or DME from our LHBS is not going to be the same for a pub to buy in bulk.

All Grain requires alot more equipment, and personnel time. When you are doing it as a business the cost savings of All-grain becomes alot less if you are big enough to have employees, but small enough that the equipment would be a significant portion of your available money.

Shooter said:

Mostly all-grain, but there are a handful that use extract. Pacific Coast Brewing here in Oakland is one of them.

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That explains why I have never been a huge fan.

All the "chain" brewpubs we have around here use extract. And one of them makes mighty fine beers, might I add. Nothing to write home about, but nothing horrible either.

So then how do you find out what they are using?

Does it really matter if it is extract or AG? If it taste good then so be it. Is the juice you drink 100% hand squeezed? No. If it is integrity you are looking for in beer, then stick to your own, because once a brew pub opens up to the public, the bottom line is putting asses in those bar stools...A brew pub can use very fancy literature for describing their brews to intice people to come in the door...but lets face it...when someone is paying, rent, salaries, overhead, heating, lighting,...ect..ect...it really comes down to cost savings, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of "cool" brew pubs use "short cuts" to save a buck or two...profit is king...IMO

What happened here? I thought there was a reasonable discussion going on that seems to have been squelched completely. I am pretty new to this site, but is this standard fare here? I'm not sure what was deleted, you know because it was deleted, but it seems a little weird that nearly half of the posts in this thread have been deleted.

LME is already mashed and concentrated... so that 1 lb will contribute way more gravity to a wort than 1 lb of crushed 2-row.

mcarb said:

What happened here? I thought there was a reasonable discussion going on that seems to have been squelched completely. I am pretty new to this site, but is this standard fare here? I'm not sure what was deleted, you know because it was deleted, but it seems a little weird that nearly half of the posts in this thread have been deleted.

Click to expand...

Usually happens when the discussion moves away from being civil and degrades into a bunch of name calling and off topic arguing.