America’s brewery count dropped for the first time since 2005 last year
New tariffs could accelerate the decline.
On the back of almost two straight decades of booming growth, things are starting to get a little flat in the American beer world, after more breweries closed than opened for the first time since 2005 in the US last year.
Pour one out
According to year-end figures from the Brewers Association, a trade group that represents over 6,500 professional members, there were 335 new brewery openings in the US through 2024, while 399 breweries called time and pulled the shutters permanently. As the association’s figures on soaring alcohol-free sales can attest, the closures are just the latest reflection of the nation’s changing drinking habits.
Worryingly for producers and beer lovers alike, President Trump’s expanded 25% steel and aluminium tariffs — as well as the high-cost environment, societal shifts, and slowing growth already blighting the industry — could raise prices and add to issues in the coming year, with steel kegs and aluminum cans obviously exposed to the new taxes.
While the craft beer craze in America has been fizzing away long enough for independent breweries to have become a go-to punchline for gentrification jokes, the closure of the nation’s oldest craft brewer, the Anchor Brewing Company, in 2023 might have marked a tipping point for the industry in recent years.
While the Brewers Association’s full 2024 figures aren’t out yet, regional craft breweries, microbreweries, and brewpubs all showed declines the year before, with taprooms driving the minimal 0.8% growth in America’s brewery count, taking the total up to 9,906 that year. With the net annual closure figure from December taken into account, that means the tally fell to 9,842 in 2024.
