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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Nanobreweries Defined

I have always felt that a reasonable definition for nanobrewery was any brewery using a three-barrel system or smaller, and now I see I'm correct. John Holl has a nice piece on nanos at craftbeer.com, and that's the definition he uses. His source? Me.
Nano-breweries, sometimes referred to as pico breweries, or bucket breweries, distribute to a limited area and only make beer in very small quantities.

How Small are Nano-Breweries?

"My working definition is three barrels or less, which essentially makes them large-scale homebrewers," said Jeff Alworth, author of the Portland-based beer blog Beervana.
Now, if only someone would call to ask my opinion on whether beers fermented with brettanomyces can properly be called sour, we'd be all set.

3 comments:

  1. Nano-brewers cannot be pico-brewers as pico is to nano as nano is to micro. Don't be frigging with the metric system.

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  2. indeed, they are all 1/1000th of the next highest order!

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  3. Chad Yakobsen of The Brettanomyces Project and the soon to come Crooked Stave Brewery did his whole graduate thesis on Brett. You can read what he says about calling Brett a Sour beer.
    http://brettanomyces.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete