These Are the Top 50 Craft Breweries of 2024

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

The article These Are the Top 50 Craft Breweries of 2024 appeared first on VinePair.