The Final Numbers for Craft Beer in 2025 Are … Not Great
The Brewers Association has their annual year-end numbers out for 2025 and as expected, it’s a bit grim. Among the key findings:
Total craft production fell 5.1%, accelerating the decline last year of 3.9%.
Overall beer sales declined slightly more, at 5.7%, allowing the craft segment to tick up to 13.3% of the total beer market. That’s way worse than the overall beer market did last year, when it declined only 1.2%.
In terms of dollars, craft constitutes a quarter of the dollars earned on beer, unchanged from last year.
The overall number of American breweries fell by 218 in the past year to 9,578 according to the Brewers Association (but please note that that figure is almost certainly overstated.)
The decline isn’t consistent across regions. “The East North Central Census division posted the strongest trend, finding growth of +0.3%, followed closely by the Pacific division (-0.1%), both outperforming national trends.” That’s pretty interesting because those are already-strong regions for craft beer.
Finally, the declines weren’t even across brewery types, either. Here were the declines by segment: brewpubs, -1.7%; taprooms, -3.9%; regional breweries, -5.9%; microbreweries, -8.9%. (The delta between taprooms and brewpubs is interesting.)
On the largest-breweries list, there were a few notable changes. The biggest gainer was the Travis and Jason Kelce-owned Garage Beer, which debuted at number 12. It was not alone, though. Tivoli Brewing (aka Outlaw Light Beer) debuted at number 18. They both make light American lagers,* neither were on last year’s list, and today they are the 22nd and 28th largest breweries in the US. So that’s interesting.
Sierra Nevada has overtaken Boston Beer as the number 2 BA-defined craft brewery in the US (Boston Beer fell to 3) and has cracked the top ten largest US breweries. Athletic has moved up to number 6 from 8 in a move that will surely launch another round of N/A think pieces. Artisanal Brewing Ventures (Victory, Southern Tier, etc) was demoted from the craft brewers list for reasons I don’t immediately grasp. Vermont’s Fiddlehead moved from 23 to 17.
On the flip side, a number of breweries slipped somewhat. Bigger sliders included Boston’s Barrel One Collective (Harpoon and Smuttynose) which dropped ten places from 13th to 23rd. Great Lakes went from 18th to 26th, Surly went from 39th to 47th, and in an interesting twist, Shipyard dropped off the list this year, but Maine Beer Company entered at 46th.
You can pore over the details here.
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* A decade ago, the idea that two makers of light lager would be in the top 20 would have sent the Brewers Association into a fit. It goes to show how the perception of “craft” has really changed.