Largest US "Breweries" Are Mostly Collectives

The Brewers Association has out their official end-of-2024 report out, and along with it their list of the largest US breweries. We’re going to delve a bit into the list, but first, let’s hear how things went last year:

Craft brewers produced 23.1 million barrels of beer in 2024, a 4.0% decrease from 2023. However, craft’s market share by volume remained essentially flat at 13.3%, the same share as in 2023, as the overall U.S. beer market* declined by 1.2% in volume…. Craft beer’s retail dollar value rose to an estimated $28.9 billion, a 3% increase over the previous year. This growth reflects pricing adjustments and steady performance in onsite sales, which outpaced distributed sales in many markets. Craft beer accounted for 24.7% of the total beer market in retail dollar sales.

So that’s not great. It’s also not surprising. As I mentioned last year, the craft segment has been totally flat for a decade. In 2015, brewers sold 24.5 million barrels, and it hasn’t budged much since. The value of that roughly 13% segment of the market has increased over time, from $22.3 billion in 2015—but keep in mind inflation has steadily ticked along. 2015’s $22.3 billion would be $30.2 billion in today’s dollars.

Collectives Mark This Era

Let’s talk about largest breweries. For decades now, the Brewers Association has broken out their membership from the larger beer industry. Once, being a member meant being independent, in both senses of the word. The breweries were independently owned, but they were also independent, or individual brands. Sierra Nevada Brewing made Sierra Nevada beer. Deschutes Brewery made Deschutes beer.

As I glanced down the list, I was struck by how few of the largest breweries in the US are still independent—and that’s as true for “craft” brands as regular brands (for regular folks, the distinction has been extremely technical and counterintuitive for years now). Of the 25 largest US breweries, only six are independent.

The further down the list you get, the more solo breweries you find—but this is exactly the point. When Anheuser-Busch bought Goose Island back in 2011, craft breweries didn’t buy other craft breweries or coagulate into collectives. Collectively, that segment produced just 11.5 million barrels, or 5.7% of the total. The next five years produced so much growth that the big companies had to get a piece of the pie. But as the market grew, competition did, too, and it became harder and harder to produce and distribute a large volume of beer competitively. One of the ways smaller breweries could compete was joining with larger breweries or creating collectives.

In the last couple weeks, we saw this process accelerate, as Left Hand merged with Dry Dock, Wilding Brands bought Great Divide, and just today, Doug Veliky reported that HenHouse and Fort Point were enjoying a Bay Area marriage. A decade ago, any of those stories would have been massive news in the industry (and controversial), and I would have gotten a lot of clicks discussing them. Today I don’t even bother to mention them because they’re so common. At this point, we don’t mind if breweries join forces because the alternative is far worse. And on that point, the Brewers Association reported that in 2024, for the first time in two decades the overall number of breweries declined (434 new breweries opened while 501 closed).

So the upshot, no shock, is that the beer business isn’t doing great, and hasn’t been for years. Little breweries aren’t closing up at great rates, but their margins are getting smaller and it’s hard to make a profit. One of the ways to manage this period is joining other breweries to reduce costs, and it’s hard to see that trend changing anytime soon.

If you’d like to look at the full list of largest breweries, you can find it here.