What size are the commercial batches?

[andyg55]

Hi all

I’m curious.How big are commercial batches of beer? Something like Guinness. What size batches would they be making, and how frequently?

cheers,
Andy

 

[VikeMan]

Guinness produces many millions of barrels per year. I don't know anything about their brewing schedule, but it would probably be fair to say that there's always something happening. And Guinness certainly isn't the largest. At the other end of the scale, I've seen nanos that brew 15 gallon batches a couple times a week.

 

[McKnuckle]

From an article published in 2012 about the expansion of the St. James's Gate brewery in Dublin:

"After months of talks with Dublin City Council, Diageo came up with its plan to expand brewing on the 55-acre site to boost annual production capacity by 7 million hectolitres from the current 9.1 million. The site brews Guinness for all markets in Europe and also the United States along with other beers."

16.1 million hectolitres annually translates to 44,109 hectolitres, or 26,952 UK barrels, every single day. But hey, maybe they take off on Sundays.

 

[Golddiggie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness_BreweryProduction Output: 50.7 million barrels.
I would gather that's for all of the recipes they brew.

I think it was smart for them to get a 9000 year lease.

 

[Qhrumphf]

It runs the range from tiny tiny producing 50 barrels a year (1 barrel is 31 gallons), to millions of barrels per year. Smaller "production" breweries and larger brewpubs could produce a few thousand barrels per year. The bigger "locals" might produce 10-20k barrels per year. If you're in the 20-50k bbl/yr range that's a good sized regional brewery. Not sure what national craft figures look like, let alone multinational.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Also worth noting that very large craft and macro brands operate multiple breweries (sometimes internationally).

 

[day_trippr]

Specifically, I believe the largest fermentation vessels in the non-macro space are around 750 barrels, though at one time iirc Ballast Point was commissioning a 1500 barrel beast (which would have held almost two million dollars worth of beer!) Not sure if they followed through with that...

Cheers!

 

[Qhrumphf]

Common commercial brewhouse sizes are 1bbl, 3bbl, 7bbl, 10bbl, 15bbl, 20bbl, 30bbl, 50bbl, and 100bbl. There are sizes in between and certainly sizes larger than that. Most commercial breweries double or quadruple batch (a 7bbl brewhouse may work with 15bbl fermenters or a 30bbl brewhouse with 120bbl fermenters). And breweries at production scale with seperate mash, lauter, kettle, and whirlpool vessels typically eventually end up rolling 24/7 or close to it (a 30bbl 4 vessel brewhouse running optimally probably turns the brewhouse every 3 hrs, producing as much as 240bbls per day). Largest craft brewhouse I've personally seen was a 50bbl brewhouse with 250bbl fermenters. This was a second facility for a brewery operating coast to coast.

 

[Nate R]

Hi all

I’m curious.How big are commercial batches of beer? Something like Guinness. What size batches would they be making, and how frequently?

cheers,
Andy

If you haven't done it yet, and you have the chance too sometime (if/when this doggone covid is done)... snag the free budweiser tour. I had a near religious moment when standing in front of the beechwood aging/ lagering tanks... words cannot describe.

 

[bierhaus15]

The largest craft breweries typically brew in batch sizes of 100-200 bbl, although some do go as high as 500 bbls.

In comparison, ABI typically has 1,000 bbl brew houses. Coors in Golden has something like 18, 500 bbl kettles in operation. Biggest beer tank I got to climb into was a 4,000 bbl horizontal aging tank and there were maybe 25 of them in the cellar. Each tank required around 200,000 lbs of grain to fill it with beer.

 

[Kharnynb]

Heineken uses 1000-4000 hectolitre tanks, or roughly 800- 3600 bbl....