What makes a brewey "commercial" on RB?

Good morning lovely beerfellows.

I tried the beers of Hohenfelder (NRW) in a place that serves only good quality, handcrafted beers. Checking here on Rb I found out that that brewery is listed as "commercial brewery" so my question: what makes a brewery "commercial" on RB?

Ayinger is also a commercial brewery on here, and they do some of the best beers in Germany.

Frankly, I have no idea what the criteria are, but in the German language, "kommerziell" is actually a synonym for "with the intent of making profit".

EDIT: ignore that last remark, I didn’t realize that you probably speak German yourself.

A commercial brewery is a national scale brewery. A brewpub brews and retails beer at the same facility.A Client brewer has a recipe or owns a brand name and pays another brewery to brew and package the beer. A contract brewer brews for clients.

It just means it’s operating for business or commerce. Not like, for example, a group of Hobbybrauer(s) that have gotten really well organised over time and serve beer at private festivals or events. It’s an actual business, regardless of size: client brewery, brewpub, or gigantic conglomeration.

(Oder?)

Besides Client/Contract that was explained by Roman, there are still some types that are missing:
- Microbrewery
- Commissioner

And we have two more types, "Brewpub" and "Brewpub/Brewery" that are overlapping.

Commercial and Microbrewery are distinguished by size (I don’t think there is a specific volume of beer though) and sometimes by geographical distribution, e.g. national vs. regional.
Quality of beer shouldn’t be a criterion here.
I think that a Microbrewery could include both Privatbrauerei and craft brewers (again, not because of expected quality but because of size).

Commissioner is a supermarket or other non-beer related business that has their beers brewed somewhere and we don’t feel right to call them "brewery".

The distinction between Brewpub and Brewery is more American; a brewpub sells most of the beer to be consumed on premises (brauhaus?) and food doesn’t get in the picture when deciding the type, although people get confused and think that a brewpub must have food because they usually do have food.
A brewery sells most of the beer to go. In cities like Vancouver most breweries have a small taproom and sometimes they are even limited to serve 12oz (350ml) only, but they sell beer to go, mostly in refillable growlers, so we call them Brewery, not Brewpub.
If a proper brewpub has a large production, they bottle+keg the beer, and both the on premise and off site sales are prominent, then it gets labeled "Brewpub/Brewery".

Originally posted by fiulijn
The distinction between Brewpub and Brewery is more American; a brewpub sells most of the beer to be consumed on premises (brauhaus?)

Thank you all for the clarification. I had "a feeling" that it was "commercial" because of the dimensions, but wanted some confirmation from the community

Well now I don’t know what ratebeer means. Deschutes is a microbrewery, but Kitzmann is a commercial brewery. My reply above was based on basic English meanings, not whatever weird meanings JoeT has in mind.

Microbreweries are commercial operations, as are brewpubs and megabreweries.

Kitzmann is certainly smaller than Deschutes.

Originally posted by BeerViking

Originally posted by fiulijn
The distinction between Brewpub and Brewery is more American; a brewpub sells most of the beer to be consumed on premises (brauhaus?)

Brauhaus is one of the biggest causes of confusion for visitors, because it makes them think "brewhouse", ie. brewery, whereas these days it’s more likely to be a gastropub or perhaps a brewery tap.

Hausbrauerei also causes confusion - some visitors think it means home-brewery, whereas it’s actually closer in meaning to microbrewery - or yes, sometimes a brewpub!