Key to producer types & symbols

brewery symbol Brewery

typically this is where the name under which beers are sold is the same as that of the company brewing them. For example, Adnam's, Phoenix. This would also include situations where a brewer goes into another company's premises and uses their plant to brew to his own recipe.

brand symbol Brand

usually a branding of some beers from a particular brewery that don't bear the name of that brewery. For example, Northern brewery's Blakemere brand or many of the fake brands brewed by Greede Kerching. Also refers to brands of the multi-nationals such as InBev where they don't come from any particular brewery.
Brands normally just get listed under the owning brewery but in some cases, to make them easy to find they get a separate listing.

cuckoo brewery symbol Cuckoo brewery

a company which has no brewery plant of its own but hires time on other beweries to brew its own beers. This classification has been introduced to differentiate these from beer companies who have their beers brewed for them, with little or no participation in the process. An example of this is Hektor's brewery; Hektor Rous himself goes to Oakham brewery (and sometimes other breweries) to brew his beers.

beer company symbol Beer company (AKA contract brewer)

a company which has no brewery plant of its own but has its beers brewed for it elsewhere. Generally these are brewed to the contract brewer's own recipe but in some cases they may just be re-badges of the real brewer's beers. An example of a beer company would be Smile's, which has beers brewed for it at Highgate.

hobby brewer symbol Hobby/part-time brewer

someone who doesn't run a brewery as a full-time business, but as a hobby or just brews on odd occasions. Note that some of these are not properly licensed so selling their beers may be illegal (in such situations, they are often given away for charity.)

keg only symbol Normally keg-only

brewers whose products are normally filtered/pasteurised so cannot be classed as "real". In many cases however, they sometimes make limited supplies available in traditional form - only beers that have been reported in this form are listed on Beermad.

bottle only symbol Normally bottle-only

brewers whose products are normally just bottled, whether or not they are filtered or pasteurised. In many cases however, they sometimes make limited supplies available in traditional form - only beers that have been reported in this form are listed on Beermad.

other name symbol Othername

these will occasionally show up where you have searched for a name which isn't the official name of a brewery, perhaps because the name has changed or because the brewery is sometimes known by an abbreviation (for example, Derby Brewing Company is sometimes referred to as "DBC".) In most cases, these links will go directly to the correct name, though in some circumstances (for example where there's some significant information on the othername's page) it may not.