In this study the anaerobic digestion of grain stillage in three different reactor systems (continuous stirred tank reactor, anaerobic sequencing batch reactor, fixed bed reactor) with and without immobilization of microorganisms was investigated to evaluate the performance during increase of the organic loading rate (OLR) from 1 to 10 g of volatile solids (VS) per liter reactor volume and day and decrease of the hydraulic retention time (HRT) from 40 to 6 days. No significant differences have been observed between the performances of the three examined reactor systems. The changes in OLR and HRT caused a reduction of the specific biogas production (SBP) of about 25% from about 650 to 550 L kg(-1) of VS but would also diminish the necessary digester volume and investment costs of about 75% compared to the state of the art. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.