Brewing is a highly automatable and industrializable process. The creative input comes from the recipes and ingredient selection; the rest is just process control. No real compromises need to be made when scaling up to high volume. In fact, larger breweries have the resources to get their beer to the customer faster and fresher... Sierra Nevada just put a brewery on the East coast, and others are doing the same type of thing. And the big companies also get the contracts for hops and malt, leaving smaller breweries fighting over what's left. Brewing is not like cooking, where high volume is more or less opposed to highest quality. If the brewmaster is leaving his personal touch on the beer, he's an epically crap brewmaster.
