The Countries With The Most Craft Breweries

If this is true, I am surprised how many Switzerland has and how few Germany has. Switzerland, a county of 8 million people, having almost 400 breweries makes a very impressive number. On the other hand, Germany's number seems far too low.

 

I could have missed it, but I didn't notice any mention of how Alltech is defining a "craft" brewery, so claims like:

... are without proper context and therefore somewhat lacking in relevance.

 

No Belgium?

 

Good point. What about the Trappist Monasteries in Belgium and France, apparently they are not considered "craft" or is Belgium too small to warrant mention on this map?

 

Big questions on methodology.

UK, for example, has 1200+ breweries, and only about 50 of those are macro, so why didn't the others make the cut?

Meanwhile, that number looks like every brewery in France whether they're 5 years old or 75 years old.
So why do those all get included?

 

I think just the top 10 make the map. There's a longer list in the press release.

 

Touching fifteen hundred in the UK.

 

Russia's a surprise. I was there for a month last year and hardly saw anything.

 

Not surprised we're the biggest, but the margin against Europe is negative for us.

 

Some of the beers out of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania are quite good. My best friend spent over a year in Siberia building things and told me Vodka was king. I know nothing about Russia except that the people are truly nice. Beer is inevitable.

 

There's only around a hundred. They're a very small country.

 

'merica.

 

What!? Nigeria not on this list??

 

Somewhat.

The number for Germany is pretty much the same as the number of breweries in Franconia alone. I'm guessing that "craft " now just means beers that are hoppy, barrel aged, and /or flavored.

 

I saw that earlier on Forbes, they should get their money back from whoever did the research. Looks like complete nonsense.

Maybe they took the number of members at SIBA a couple of years ago and used that, which is very lazy and inaccurate for the UK

edit: oh they have. Lazy lazy.
http://www.siba.co.uk/forms/BeerReport2014.pdf

 

This made my day! Seeing Italy up there having come a long way since the early 90's says something....

 

The whole exercise opens a can of worms because nobody knows exactly what constitutes a "craft brewery"
The UK figure seems to relate to an organisation called the Small Independent Brewers Association (SIBA) , many but not all "craft" brewers are members of this.
Going therefore on the (US) Brewers' Association definition based on barrelage we have over 1400 craft brewers in the UK , twice as many per head as the US.On a practical note, because of our small size and no restrictions to movement of beer a drinker in the UK probably has access to more brewers than anywhere else.
Perhaps the US should be compared to Europe as a whole as Europe is a single market with free movement of beer regardless of national borders.

 

WTF Germany has something like 1500 breweries. Sounds like a semantics game going on with 'craft', possibly.

 

Hmm, I found them unfriendly. Not rude or bolshy, just unwelcoming and remarkably unhelpful. But yeah, vodka is king.

Likewise I was in Talinn last year (I get around) and didn't see much going on. I must be walking around with my eyes closed.