Brewery Openings Surge

The Brewers Association had an interesting little item yesterday, A New Brewery Nearly Every Day, in which they detailed the recent numbers of new brewery openings. It’s a pretty remarkable jump.

• Last Year: 110 confirmed openings
• So Far This Year: 155 confirmed openings
• Total U.S. Breweries Now: 1,625

If that pace continues, we’d see roughly 250 open this year, which is more than in any other year I can recall. From the work of brewery detective Erin Glass, most of these are not nanobreweries, either — not that there’s anything wrong with nanobreweries or even picobreweries.

This is made even more impressive given the state of our economy. I’d be curious to know where the financing for these new businesses is coming from, whether traditional small business loans or from more creative sources.

Here’s where that leaves us:

Where does that put us for brewery counts? We believe there were 1,625 U.S. breweries as of the June 30 count. While the brewpub roster is climbing a little, up to 993, as we see some closings to offset the growth somewhat, the number of microbreweries is at 520 now.

Will it continue for the rest of the year? Here’s a stat. One year ago we had 260 projects on our breweries-in-planning list. Today we have 389.