Microbrewery

Brewing plant of the microbrewery Hops & Barley in Berlin-Friedrichshain

Brewery and catering operations of the Zerodegrees microbrewery in Cardiff , Wales

Brewery of the New Glarus Brewing Company, founded in 1993, in New Glarus , Wisconsin, USA

Microbreweries are breweries that produce only a small amount of beer . The term is derived from the English micro brewery , which in the Anglo-American world describes its own type of brewery. Their commercial orientation distinguishes them from home and hobby brewing . The term is also used synonymously for microbrewery in German-speaking countries .

German-speaking area

The term is sometimes used in connection with home breweries and craft beer . It is also used synonymously for microbrewery (see microbrewery ), which represent the lowest level in the classification of breweries according to production volume in German-speaking countries. Up to and including 2005, the Federal Statistical Office summarized the group up to 5000 hectoliters per year, since 2006 the smallest group has been reported with a production of up to 1000 hectoliters per year.

In the tax law of the European Union , the annual production of less than 200,000 hectoliters can benefit from a lower beer tax , for example in Germany .

Occasionally, a trend towards microbreweries is described, which can be traced back to the episode `` Beer self-brewed '' (No. 80) from Jean Pütz 's program Hobbythek (WDR) from 1982. Some of the home and hobby brewers who were initially motivated by the program later became commercially independent as local microbrewers.

According to the German Brewers' Association , a good half of the around 1400 breweries in Germany are microbreweries that produce less than 1000 hectoliters per year (as of 2016).

literature

• Fritz Jacob (Ed.): Microbreweries. From project planning to quality assurance . Self-published by MEBAK , Freising 2015, ISBN 978-3-9815960-5-2 .

Web links

Commons : Microbreweries  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Mikrobrauer.com: Beer map - interactive map with microbreweries in Germany
• Nina Anika Klotz: Microbreweries in Berlin: Rye Roll, freshly tapped . In: Spiegel Online , December 9, 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lukas Bay: "We really wanted to be the first" . Handelsblatt .de, July 27, 2014.
2. ↑ the hobbythek idea became a success story in derwesten.de .
3. ↑ Sandra Milden: Principle: That has to be a big deal! ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Kölnische Rundschau , October 8, 2013: “A group of beer lovers are making the dream of a brewery come true”. 
4. ↑ Number of breweries in Germany rises to over 1,400 . Deutscher Brauer-Bund , March 27, 2017, accessed on April 16, 2017.
5. ↑ In Germany there are more breweries than ever . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung online, March 25, 2017, accessed on April 16, 2017.