Commercial Brewery designation when adding a new brewer

I’m noticing that a lot of new and small brewers have the designation “Commercial Brewery”. The simple reason for this is that that is the default setting. That designation is intended for larger brewers - say “regional” size and above. Of course, it’s almost inconceivable that a newly established brewery is going to be on that scale - the vast majority are going to be microbreweries, client brewers etc.

Could I just ask that, when adding a new brewer, people give it some thought and don’t just stick with the default setting of Commercial Brewery.

Just for clarification, as it seems to cause some confusion, brewers that do not have their own production facilities are Client Brewers in RateBeer parlance, not Contract Brewers. The Contract Brewer is the one where the beer is actually produced. The only circumstances in which the Contract Brewer designation is appropriate is where the brewer ONLY makes beer for third parties - and there are precious few of those.

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One other point regarding adding new brewers. Could we please stick to the official postal address? And that will generally mean checking it by plugging the postcode into the Royal Mail address finder as brewers cannot always be relied upon to get their own address correct. The reason for this is that departing from the proper postal address often screws up the mapping and, unlike for places, there’s no facility to edit the co-ordinates manually for brewers.

On that basis I note that Jabru Bev Co is down as a Commissioner but should be a Client Brewer,

Having said that I don’t know if an admin has confirmed they do not have their own brewery premises?

Yeah, I didn’t mention the Commissioner v Client Brewer distinction as it’s not entirely straightforward. At the extremes, a “cuckoo” brewer (or whatever you want to call them) that essentially rents a brewery and does everything themselves is a Client Brewer, whilst what one might call a beer marketing company that just gets a beer made and slaps their branding on it is a Commissioner. In between, there’s a whole lot of grey (and, often, lack of information).

The Commissioner designation was initially introduced (somewhat in haste) because some admins were very opposed to things like supermarkets being listed as “Brewers” in RateBeer terms. On the other hand, there’s a big advantage for users in having, say, Marks & Spencer beers all listed together rather than scattered around the myriad breweries they’re made at. So Commissioner was something of a compromise but, like so many things around here, I don’t think the discussion was ever fully concluded, or the details & definitions thrashed out.

Resurrecting this thread as I came across a new brewery this evening currently not in the RateBeer database, and it’s related to this topic.

I’ll try to confirm with them at a more reasonable hour but I strongly suspect them to be a client brewer - written on the back of label on their beer is “brewed and bottled for [their brewery name]” (emphasis mine).
However it doesn’t mention at which brewery the beer was brewed and bottled. Is there no requirement for this, legal or otherwise?
How would an ordinary person go about finding out which brewery brewed it? Is it just a case of asking the client brewer on social media and hope they give an honest answer? They don’t even give their own address on the label.

I know it seems obvious to do what I just said but I find it strange given all the food/drink regulations we have in the UK (and EU) that this sort of information can be so easily hidden from the public.

I don’t believe there is. Unfortunately.