America’s craft brewing industry isn’t growing as quickly as in years’ past, but sales are still on the rise and new breweries continue to open at a feverish pace. The Brewers Association tracks and supports craft breweries young and old and they just released their annual list of the 50 fastest growing small and independent craft breweries of 2018.
This year’s Top 50 fastest growing breweries are fairly well distributed, with 27 of the 50 U.S. states represented by at least one brewery on the list. The median overall size of the Top 50 breweries is 1,350 barrels and the median year over year growth rate of the members of this elite list is 163 percent. Among the top 50, there are 35 breweries, 13 brewpubs, and 2 regional craft breweries.
Bart Watson, Chief Economist for the Brewers Association, points out that in spite of greater challenges this past year, there were still ample opportunities for entrepreneurs to show their creative skills and marketing prowess.
“Even as market competition continues to increase, these small and independent breweries and brewpubs demonstrate there are still growth opportunities across a diverse set of regions and business models,” said Watson.
For consideration in the Top 50 list, breweries had to be open or before December 31, 2016. That way, they would have two full years of operation and therefore exactly two years of data to fairly compare. Only breweries that reported their 2018 production numbers to the Brewers Association annual Beer Industry Production Survey were included in the rankings. There also had to be validated production figures from 2017 to qualify. Breweries that only had estimate data were excluded.
The Brewers Association plans to discuss the State of the Industry at the 2019 Craft Brewers Conference® & BrewExpo America® next month in Denver, April 8-11. They will likely touch on the Top 50 fastest growing breweries at some point during the conference and officials will be more than happy to answer questions. The Brewers Association’s complete 2018 industry analysis will be published in the May/June issue of The New Brewer, available in May 2019.
Here is a full list, in ranking order, to accompany the map above:
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