How do brew pubs do it?

How do brew pubs get their beer to tap from the fermenter, filter, brite tank?
Do they keg it, store it, then tap it as needed? Pipe it straight to tap from the brite tank? How does it work?
I have never looked into it, but figured someone here would know.

One that I've got a good look at basically pipes the beer from the fermenter, through a filter (depending on the style) and into the brite tank where it is carbed and fed into tap lines surrounded by coolant. At least that is how I see it. I was more interested in the brewing equipment than the serving equipment.

They also fill corneys or other vessels from those tanks to feed the taps while a new beer is being set up. They can also serve other brewery's beer if need be when they run out. They are one of the smallest breweries in the state, so when the customers are hitting the taps hard, it's making the brewers work OT just to try to keep up.

Many of them keg their beer.

I worked at one in Nashville (very briefly), and they had serving tanks for their brews, basically giant kegs. They had lines running to each station from the serving tanks.

I know of one that serves directly out of 10BBL tanks until they get down to about 2 BBL and then they'll transfer to four sankes. This opens up the larger tank for another batch and also allows having more different types of beer on tap than bright tanks.

i've seen a few that serve right from the brite tanks, and some from kegs, i think it's just a matter of what is easier for that particular pub. i think it would make good sense to brite tank your beers and keep others in kegs.

Depending on the state, the brewpub may be restricted to a certain method of storage due to excise tax implications. When I was at the brewpub in the Boardwalk at Disney World, it looked like they were serving out of 10BBL tanks marked "tax assessed" or something like that.

(on an unrelated note, the lines running from those tanks were clear vinyl and exposed to the bar area, which was in full view of the storefront windows. I was there at night, but I wonder if enough light makes it to them to skunk the beer in the lines. Their wheat beer had some pretty awful fermentation temp defect flavors, which made me wonder...)