On Tuesday, the Brewers Association (BA) unveiled its yearly production review of the craft brewing industry and identified the top 50 craft producers of 2024.
Last year was another tough year for the brewing industry at large, with 2024 marking the first year since 2005 that the overall number of craft breweries in the U.S. declined. In 2023, there were a total of 9,683 operational craft breweries in the country. Last year, that number dropped to 9,612, which includes 1,934 microbreweries, 3,389 brewpubs, 3,695 taproom breweries, and 266 regional craft breweries. 2024 also marked the fourth consecutive year the craft brewing industry experienced a decline in the number of openings. Just 434 new breweries opened their doors last year, while 501 shuttered operations entirely.
The BA identified several fundamental challenges brewers face at the moment, including shifting consumer preferences, rising ingredient costs, and increased competition. The ongoing trade war caused by the Trump administration’s tariffs isn’t helping matters either. As the BA notes, “tariffs on imported brewing equipment, steel kegs, aluminum cans, and key ingredients such as hops and malt only exacerbate these financial pressures.”
Despite the challenges, the BA notes that the closure rate remained “relatively low,” sitting at around 5 percent. (That rate hovered around 4 percent in 2023.)
Overall craft production was also down in 2024, with brewers churning out 23.1 million barrels of beer, marking a 4.0 percent decrease year-over-year. But it’s not all doom and gloom for craft beer. The category’s market share by volume (13.3 percent) remained practically flat year-over-year while craft’s retail dollar value rose by 3 percent to reach $28.9 billion. In the beer market at large, craft accounted for 24.7 percent of retail dollar sales in 2024.
Employment was another bright spot last year: the number of jobs in the craft beer category jumped 3 percent to 197,113. According to the BA, a shift towards hospitality-focused establishments like brewpubs and taprooms are to thank for the surge.
“In a mature market, not every year is going to be defined by substantial growth. While progress may not come in additional production volume, it can still come in honing operations, business practices, and world-class beer,” Matt Gaioch, the BA’s staff economist, said in the report. “Even in this challenging environment, small brewers have demonstrated that they have the skills and resilience to fight through this period to be better positioned for the months ahead.”
Of the top 50 overall brewing companies identified by the BA, which are ranked in terms of sales volume, 41 were small and independent craft operations.
“While distribution is only becoming more competitive, the top 50 list reflects some of the strongest, most emblematic companies in craft beer,” Gaicoch noted. “Enduring brands continue to resonate with drinkers — regardless of their size or location. In 2024, eight new breweries moved into the top 50 craft list since the year prior — evidence that brewers are still finding ways to lean into what’s working.”
Check out the full list of the top 50 craft breweries and their locations below.
The Top 50 U.S. Craft Brewing Companies of 2024
| Rank | Company | City | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D. G. Yuengling and Son Inc | Pottsville | PA |
| 2 | Boston Beer Co | Boston | MA |
| 3 | Sierra Nevada Brewing Co | Chico | CA |
| 4 | Tilray Beer Brands | New York | NY |
| 5 | Duvel Moortgat USA | Cooperstown | NY |
| 6 | Gambrinus | Shiner | TX |
| 7 | Matt Brewing Co | Utica | NY |
| 8 | Athletic Brewing Company | Milford | CT |
| 9 | Brooklyn Brewery | Brooklyn | NY |
| 10 | Monster Brewing | Longmont | CO |
| 11 | Deschutes Brewery | Bend | OR |
| 12 | New Glarus Brewing Co | New Glarus | WI |
| 13 | Barrel One Collective | Boston | MA |
| 14 | Georgetown brewing Co | Seattle | WI |
| 15 | Gordon Biersch Brewing Co | San Jose | CA |
| 16 | Rhinegeist Brewery | Cincinnati | OH |
| 17 | Craft ‘Ohana (Maui/Modern Times) | Kihei | HI |
| 18 | Great Lakes Brewing Company | Cleveland | OH |
| 19 | Narrangansett Brewing Co | Pawtucket | RI |
| 20 | Tröegs Brewing Co | Hershey | PA |
| 21 | Allagash Brewing Company | Portland | ME |
| 22 | August Schell Brewing Company | New Ulm | MN |
| 23 | Fiddlehead Brewing | Shelburne | VT |
| 24 | Stevens Point Brewery | Stevens Point | WI |
| 25 | Pittsburgh Brewing Co | Pittsburgh | PA |
| 26 | Three Floyds Brewing | Munster | IN |
| 27 | Odell Brewing Co | Fort Collins | CO |
| 28 | Great Frontier Holdings | Eugene | OR |
| 29 | Abita Brewing Co | Covington | LA |
| 30 | BrewDog Brewing Co | Canal Winchester | OH |
| 31 | Creature Comforts Brewing Co. | Athens | GA |
| 32 | Hendler Family Brewing Company | Framingham | MA |
| 33 | Alaskan Brewing Co. | Juneau | AK |
| 34 | Summit Brewing Co | St. Paul | MN |
| 35 | Saint Arnold Brewing Co | Houston | TX |
| 36 | Revolution Brewing | Chicago | IL |
| 37 | Kona Brewing Hawaii | Kailua-Kona | HI |
| 38 | Pizza Port | Carlsbad | CA |
| 39 | Surly Brewing Company | Minneapolis | MN |
| 40 | pFriem Family Brewers | Hood River | OR |
| 41 | Fremont Brewing | Seattle | WA |
| 42 | The Florida Brewery | Auburndale | FL |
| 43 | BJ’s Restaurants, Inc. | Huntington Beach | CA |
| 44 | Russian River Brewing Co | Santa Rosa | CA |
| 45 | Shipyard Brewing Co | Portland | UT, NY |
| 46 | New Trail Brewing Company | Williamsport | PA |
| 47 | Zero Gravity Craft Brewery | Burlington | VT |
| 48 | Fat Head’s Brewery | Middleburg Heights | OH |
| 49 | Drake’s Brewing Co. / Bear Republic | San Leandro | CA |
| 50 | Rogue Ales Brewery | Newport | OR |
VP Pro Take
“A weird uncoupling happened during the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency: people would respond to surveys saying their economic outlook was good, but the country’s economic outlook was bad. Smarter people than me have tried to make sense of the disconnect (after all, Americans’ own financial fitness, in the aggregate, has historically directionally tracked with their view of America’s), laying blame with polling blindspots, media bosses’ MAGA leanings, and an increased sense of precarity after decades of coordinated attacks on the New Deal’s objectively successful, objectionable-to-capital social-welfare system. Dumber people than me have blamed immigrants and too-online leftists for the cognitive dissonance. And here we are.
A parallel dynamic emerged in the craft brewing industry last year. Brewers consistently expressed concern for the segment overall, even though they were often doing alright (or even great!) themselves. I came across this at the Craft Brewers Conference in April 2024, and again at the Virginia Brewers Conference in September 2024, and in a bunch of one-on-one conversations in between. Things aren’t too bad for us, per se, but they’re bad. Both can be true, of course: the American craft brewing segment, like the voting public, is no monolith. With the release of the BA’s 2024 numbers, we have more confirmation that both things were true last year. At an estimated four percent volume decline last year, craft brewers did slightly worse than they did in 2023 in the aggregate. (Yes, retail dollar value grew three percent, but you can only take so much price, and the segment was already flirting with that ceiling before the Trump administration took a hot dump on the global economy.) But dig into the accompanying top-50 list, and you’ll find some big winners in the net loss.
Smart regional breweries with compelling portfolios and well-defined brands like Fiddlehead, New Trail, pFriem, and Rhinegeist all managed to climb several spots up the list in 2024. Brewbound crunched the numbers and found that nine breweries appeared on the BA’s list for the first time this year, while seven slid off it. Only one of the first-timers was a roll-up — Barrel One Collective, the product of a merger between Mass.-based Bay Brewing Co. and FinestKind Brewing. So a roll-up of roll-ups. And even so, the former group stood at No. 18 in 2023, and the new entity came in at No. 13 in 2024. (In other words, Barrel One didn’t Tilray itself to the top of the charts outta nowhere.) We’ll know which of these gains were absolute (i.e., adding barrels year-over-year) vs. relative (hanging onto existing volume while competitors hemorrhage) when the BA releases the raw production numbers that inform its annual Top 50 list. That should hit next month. But the truth is, in last year’s market, craft breweries that managed to lose fewer barrels than their peers were effectively winners. How’s that for cognitive dissonance?” —Dave Infante, VinePair columnist and contributing editor
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