The Number of Breweries Per Capita in Every State Has Changed Dramatically Since 2010 — Here’s What the Shift Looks Like [MAP]
It can be easy to look at the current rate of brewery openings in the United States with panic. In 2025, the number of craft brewery closures outpaced openings. The same year, the number of total breweries in the country dropped for the first time since 2005.
But the 21st century has still seen incredible growth for the industry. According to data from the Brewers Association, 9,696 breweries were in operation in the U.S. last year, a 445 percent jump from the 1,779 total in 2010. For a state-by-state comparison of that expansion, we calculated each state’s number of breweries per capita and the percent change from 2010 to 2025.
In North Dakota, the breweries-per-capita count has skyrocketed by 1,449 percent since 2010, giving the state the largest influx of openings per 100,000 residents in the country. Arkansas experienced the second highest jump with 1,304 percent more in 2025 than 15 years prior. Rounding out the states with the top-five biggest increases were Alabama (1,074 percent), Kansas (1,030 percent), and Mississippi (955 percent).
In 2010, North Dakota, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi ranked lowest of all states in breweries-per-capita measurements. While the presence of breweries exploded across the country in the previous 15 years, the percent change looks most drastic in these states because each had a previously meek beer scene. North Dakota’s brewery count likely spiked after the 2013 founding of the North Dakota Brewers Guild, which helped pass an easier licensing process for small breweries. Brewers in Arkansas also attribute the craft beer boom there to looser state alcohol laws.
No state recorded a drop in breweries per capita from 2010 to 2025, but some saw dramatically fewer openings per 100,000 residents than others. Nevada and Oregon posted the least growth at 121 and 122 percent, respectively. Washington, D.C., and Utah (each 139 percent) and Hawaii (174 percent) also fell on the lower end. Oregon’s beer scene likely didn’t grow as much as other states’ because the state has invested much of its efforts in its burgeoning wine scene in recent years, and the small size of D.C. makes the measurement difficult to compare to other states.
For a better view of how the U.S. beer scene has grown over the previous 15 years, we charted and mapped the percent change of each state’s number of breweries per capita between 2010 and 2025.
Source note: All brewery data is from the Brewers Association. The 2010 BA data, retrieved via the Wayback Machine, was converted from “capita per brewery” to breweries per 100,000 total residents. The 2025 BA data was recalculated from BA-provided total population figures rather than its published 21+ per-capita metric, and Puerto Rico was excluded to match the 2010 50 states + D.C. dataset. Population denominators are BA-provided or BA-implied, not independently substituted Census figures.
The Number of Breweries per Capita in Each State
State
Breweries per Capita in 2010
Breweries per Capita in 2025
Percent Change
North Dakota
0.15
2.38
1,499%
Arkansas
0.14
1.93
1,304%
Alabama
0.08
0.98
1,074%
Kentucky
0.18
2.08
1,030%
Mississippi
0.07
0.71
955%
Rhode Island
0.38
3.68
868%
South Dakota
0.49
4.49
814%
New York
0.30
2.70
788%
Virginia
0.46
3.91
745%
Ohio
0.41
3.39
731%
Connecticut
0.39
3.20
717%
Florida
0.21
1.64
689%
Oklahoma
0.24
1.87
678%
New Jersey
0.23
1.77
678%
North Carolina
0.50
3.73
643%
Minnesota
0.53
3.91
641%
Georgia
0.22
1.58
631%
Texas
0.19
1.37
620%
Pennsylvania
0.61
4.29
607%
South Carolina
0.32
2.19
575%
Maryland
0.33
2.15
555%
Louisiana
0.18
1.13
538%
West Virginia
0.32
2.04
530%
Illinois
0.38
2.28
497%
Tennessee
0.36
2.12
485%
New Hampshire
1.21
7.07
481%
Kansas
0.53
2.92
456%
New Mexico
1.02
5.03
394%
Indiana
0.54
2.62
386%
Michigan
0.86
4.17
384%
Iowa
0.79
3.77
378%
Massachusetts
0.64
3.02
371%
Maine
2.33
10.46
348%
Nebraska
0.82
3.52
328%
Missouri
0.67
2.81
320%
Alaska
2.11
8.82
317%
Wyoming
2.13
7.98
275%
California
0.66
2.43
269%
Arizona
0.47
1.72
266%
Idaho
1.21
4.43
266%
Wisconsin
1.27
4.44
250%
Vermont
3.36
11.32
237%
Montana
2.73
9.09
233%
Colorado
2.35
7.30
211%
Washington
1.83
5.54
203%
Delaware
1.23
3.40
177%
Hawaii
0.66
1.81
174%
Utah
0.58
1.38
139%
Washington, D.C.
0.66
1.59
139%
Oregon
3.16
7.00
122%
Nevada
0.70
1.55
121%
*Image retrieved from Adam Wilson via unsplash.com
The article The Number of Breweries Per Capita in Every State Has Changed Dramatically Since 2010 — Here’s What the Shift Looks Like [MAP] appeared first on VinePair.