What is a micro brewery ?
Microbreweries are those small beer producers that serve regional or local markets. If you are brewing beer, you cannot just qualify as a legit microbrewery. You have to first be consistent of producing at least 15,000 barrels of beer every year. Microbreweries have been present even before. When the days of refrigeration is yet to come, most people brew beer for it could not be transported to towns and village because it can quickly turns bad. When the days of refrigeration come into play, small village and towns opted from making their own beers in favor of those larger brewers like Anheiser Busch and Miller.
Some people who continuously brewing their own beer seems to be used to the taste their beer has. During the years of prohibition, all beers are brewed in people’s own homes, as the selling of alcoholic drinks was by law, illegal. After the abolishment of the prohibition law, people who are brewing their own beer were mostly encouraged by others to continue brewing and bring it out on the market, which are local bars. This is the reason for the rebirth of microbrewery.
The term microbrewery came was first used by a small brewery operation that started in the year 1976 in Sonoma, California. In 1979, Boulder Brewery was founded in Colorado and still operational up to present. They started their business under a goat shed, but with a bit of success, they now serve their beers in all part of the state.
Larger cities in America now have several microbreweries and brewpubs. Even though microbreweries are not that much of a competition for larger beer companies, they do in fact; claim about 3% of the market share. With this, large brewery companies start their own lines of microbrewery, spun off from the brand name beers.
