[latj]

I think huherto is suggesting beer concurrency. That is, instead of having a 20 gallon setup, having four 5 gallon setups. It will take longer because you will have to do whatever mixing,testing, etc four times but if the longest part of the process is waiting- you win in that aspect.

The question is- would this make it easier to be more consistent?

[rje]

As a homebrewer I think this would be a pretty rough way to try and scale. The actual brew time would be the same, but you've increased your cleaning and maintenance significantly, you need a solution to pipe from multiple stations into fermenting vessels, you need a significant amount of extra space dedicated to brewing that could otherwise be used for fermentation vessels, etc.

I think the right answer is to get your equipment and do test batches to rework your recipes at scale. If you're successful as a brewery it's a process you'll have to do multiple times as you grow anyways, so avoiding it once seems like a silly optimization.

[huherto]

Thanks latj, this is what I was thinking. Big batches may be a good model for a large brewery but not necessarily for a small one that is growing organically.

I can imagine several advantages. You can replicate without having to extrapolate quantities, pressure, etc. You get to run more experiments, I can envision a supervised machine learning system that learns which parameters make the best beer. You don't throw out big batches, etc. Sure, it may require more labor, but you get other advantages.

[latj]

How about a coop of home brewers- everyone agrees to brew a certain recipe of beer that month; All the beer gets blended together and redistributed. What does that taste like?

I visited a village once that did this with their wine and distilled liquor.