[rcoder]

Generally speaking, the cost of scaling beer production is paid once. You need bigger, more expensive brewing equipment (and can't just repurpose mass-produced consumer items like turkey fryers and drink coolers) and the recipes have to be adjusted to the new capacity and setup, but your unit cost is much, much lower.

Surface area doesn't scale linearly with capacity, so both cost and cleaning time actually get _better_ as you scale up. Grain, cleaning supplies, and tools get cheaper as you scale, too.

It also only takes a tiny active culture of something bad to ruin an entire batch of beer. Each vessel, airlock, valve, and spoon is another potential source of contamination, so having fewer things to clean is a Good Thing.