Looking at some of the recent reporting on the state of craft beer in America - total net closures in 2025 were 2% or so - total number of operating breweries ~9500. Keep in mind that the number of breweries in the US has never topped 10k. What this says to me is that the fall of the industry is greatly exaggerated - and what is actually happening is akin to the old GE/Jack Welsh management model which said that, as a business, one needs to continually be dropping (and a portion of) the bottom 6-10% of poor performing employees to ensure continuous improvement. My analogy here is to the craft industry as a whole - it’s a good thing, in general, that the poor performers are closing their doors - so that others can take their place and offer better beer, better hospitality etc. Thoughts ?
I have never spent one second worrying about whether I had ready access to good beer. Openings and closures are part of the regular churn of business—especially the small, local variety. It’s unfortunate for the individual breweries and their owners and employees anytime one closes, but I suppose at least some of those folks move on to open or work in other breweries, and for others maybe it was just never a good fit. We will be fine—and far better off than a few decades ago when a handful of behemoths made all the beer and it all tasted pretty much the same.
My biggest issue is having enough time to go to all the quality breweries in my local area. It's much more entertaining and conversation worthy to discuss the industry collapsing than discussing one that is stable.
I wonder what the percentage of breweries opening this year in sites that had been breweries is. It seems like I've been to more than a few places that were once other places.
I think a lot of this depends on where you're coming from in the beer world. As a consumer, it's just a market shift and maybe even a return to normalcy after massive/explosive growth. As someone whose entire life is dedicated to brewing (Doug from Cycle's videos come to mind), I think it hits a little bit different. Places that did everything "right" aren't necessarily the ones that are succeeding anymore. There's definitely some resentment going on in the industry. Not just the low key stuff where brewers are side-eying other places either. I'm not in that deep, so I won't pretend to know. To me, it's like a hobby or a type of music that's no longer cool, but is still around. To the people that threw themselves into those things as a career and a lifestyle, I think it hits different.
To quote Charles Darwin: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." I don't think that it's necessary for others to take their place for it to be a good thing. It is possible that there are just too many breweries for the market to sustain.
An enviable problem, to be sure. Indeed, but it's just as entertaining to discuss an industry that's in obvious flux for a variety of reasons.
That would definitely be an interesting metric to track. I know there's been a lot of that here in Pittsburgh in the last 5 years.
I think it is wise to bear in mind that breweries are businesses and sometimes a business does not succeed due to business reasons such as poor ownership/management decision making, etc. A brewery can produce superior product but not succeed due to poor business moves. I have read about a number of breweries that have closed due to being undercapitalized from the beginning (i.e., opening) of the brewery. A person could be a talented brewer but at the same time a poor businessperson. Cheers!
Man, I wish that was a problem in Berkshire County. We don't have many breweries, and only a few of them are worth a damn. I'd love to have more hyperlocal breweries that I could support, but there are other readily available options that are at least regional, less expensive, and better.
Just a few of the breweries I regularly support (some weekly). Notch, Idle Hands, Silvaticus, Backbeat. I've checked some others I hadn't before lately too that were quite good. I guess the closer you are to the city, the more options you have. Makes sense.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" is a famous quote by musician Frank Zappa, first appearing in the 1970s, implying that while jazz music hadn't died, it had become stale, predictable, or overly commercialized in his view. What is happening in Craft Beer is much the same today. Make a good beer, at a decent price, in enough markets and I will buy it.
I became a beer geek in 2004. The only way the beer scene now is worse than then is in the number of places that have good imported Belgian and German beers on tap. Otherwise absolutely everything is better. It would have to crash tremendously for things to be worse than when I started. As such, I am not worried.
I simply see it as the ebb-and-flow of business. I travel enough to see that craft beer, at a considerable level of breweries, I will say is here to stay... Salud!
