Craft beer predictions for 2022 from 2012

It would be interesting to see at what population threshold literally every town in America has at least one brewery/brewpub. I would guess about 50,000 but maybe it’s lower.

 

Google says there are 798 cities (4.1% of the population) with 50,000 or more people, but no lost given. It would take some busy work to discover but it's doable.

 

You’d need a sortable list of all cities above X population and a list of all breweries/brewpubs (call them “brewing establishments”) and their locations. Then cross-reference until you hit a town of X population that doesn’t support a single brewing establishment, and the population threshold just above that is your number. I’m not doing it. Maybe someone who knows how to use AI could figure it out.

 

Laredo Texas (2024 Population 256,895) was the correct answer until Laredo Brewing Company opened in or slightly before September 2021. Laredo added a second brewery in November 2022.

If someone pings Bart Watson on Twitter, he can provide the correct answer relatively easily with his data.

 

At least in my area there are breweries closing or struggling that offer these things.

That being said, these ancillary benefits are certainly some of the reasons brewery openings kept increasing.

Again, at least in my area, there were virtually no "tap rooms" in 2012. If I recall, Nightshift might have been the first one when they opened their current Everett tap room in 2014. They had a very small warehouse "tap room" in 2012, but that wasn't what we know as "tap rooms" today. 2014 changed everything, and people began copying that model in and around Boston.

I remember there were routinely lines to get in every weekend. Slowly this changed since other places that offered a similar experience opened up. Now I don't recall any lines at breweries simply just to get in on a weekend and enjoy a beer.

 

I think it would be much lower than that. If a town has 2500-ish legal age drinkers, and 200 of them stop by the brewery for 2 beers a day, that's 400 pints at $5, that's 2 grand a day, x 350 days a year, that's 700k/yr. Which should be enough to keep a lean operation running. If Deming Washington can support a brewery, a lot of towns can.

 

Aberdeen WA, population, 17k, has 2 breweries.
Concrete Wa, pop 791, has 1.
Moses Lake, pop 26k, has 2.

I don't think it takes to big a population to support a brewery.

 

RIP to all those people from 2012BA

 

I agree, but I’m saying if a single town anywhere in the country of a given population does not support at least one brewery, then the population at which all towns in the U.S. have a brewery goes up. You’re talking about Washington state, where beer culture has flourished for decades. You might be forgetting about small and midsized cities in the Bible Belt, Deep South, and Utah.

 

Oh, for sure there would be places where it wouldn't work. I just think overall, the amount of locals needed to keep a local-focused brewery running might be lower than 50k. Bellingham, Bend, and Asheville are all similarly sized (90-100k) with multiple breweries.

 

Definitely. My original inquiry was “at what population threshold literally every town in America has at least one brewery/brewpub.” I’m sure there are towns with a population of 300 people that have a brewery but that’s not what I was getting at. I’d like to know, just out of curiosity, the population at which having a brewing establishment is basically a prerequisite (regardless of all other factors). I’d guess it might be even higher than 50k even if most towns smaller than that also have one.

 

I feel like there are some fairly large towns south of San Francisco that don't have a brewery

Edit to add; I'm thinking that lots of sprawling metroplexes like LA, Atlanta, or Dallas-Ft. Worth will have suburban towns with populations around our over 100k that don't have a brewery

 

I tend to avoid suburbs but I suspect you might be right.

 

Since my crystal ball is about as clear as a milkshake IPA (as evidenced by my March Madness brackets every year), I'm glad I wasn't around in 2012 to embarrass myself with a prediction on the status of craft beer ten years down the road. Hell, I had a bad enough track record predicting at the beginning of 2022 what would happen in 2022.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...-2020s-that-takes-off-huge-nationwide.632116/

For the record, I did pick Purdue this year.