The Numbers and Who Counts Them
The country still has roughly 9,700 of them, on the Brewers Association's own count. Both things are true at once, and the second is why the first stopped being the story. Most of the closures are small and regional, which is why the national count moved before anybody's shelf did.
Read the piece2024The year the arrows swapped places
Closures ran ahead of openings for the first time since the craft boom began. The margin was tight — a crossover, not a collapse — and the Brewers Association publishes both counts, which is what makes it a fact rather than an impression.
Openings and closures of US breweries, drawn to the shape of the Brewers Association's annual series. The two lines ran in the same direction for two decades; in 2024 the lower one came up through the other.
Brewers Association annual craft brewing figures
Numbers
The acquisitions of the 2010s concentrated US and global beer volume in five named multinationals — this piece maps which brands each owns, which craft acquisitions…
Numbers
For decades Bud Light was the highest-volume beer in the United States; in 2023 it lost that position and subsequent shipment data from the Beer Institute shows no…
Numbers
Hard seltzer's trajectory — rapid volume growth through 2020, then inventory write-downs and category contraction by 2022–23 — is one of the sharpest reversals in…
Supporters
What Is Actually Being Brewed
No- and low-alcohol beer is the one volume category growing consistently across both craft and multinational producers — this piece explains the dealcoholisation methods Athletic Brewing has taken the category into the top twenty US brewers by volume, Guinness 0.0 sells out, and Corona Cero bought the Olympic sponsorship.
Read the piece≈9,700
Breweries operating in the United States after the 2024 net reduction.
Brewers Association annual count
≈13%
Craft's share of US beer volume; its share of retail dollars runs higher.
Brewers Association · Beer Institute
2023
The year Bud Light lost the top-selling spot, on shipment data, and has not taken it back.
Beer Institute · TTB shipment data
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