Annual year-end brewery count 2022

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1

As every year I have compiled the number of active physical breweries per country listed on the site.
In 2022 we saw an increase of 5.1% compared to last year. This is slightly higher than 4.8% in 2021, but lower than the 7.1% and 8.6% in 2020 and 2019.

The most noteworthy achiever is Japan, up by over 36%. Good progress also in France and Italy.
On the other end we see a decline in for instance England, Norway and Scotland.

Pos 2022 Pos 2021 Country # of breweries Increase 2022 Increase 2022 %
1 1 USA 8242 371 4.71%
2 2 Germany 1831 50 2.81%
3 3 England 1535 -53 -3.34%
4 4 France 1477 183 14.14%
5 5 Canada 1264 42 3.44%
6 6 Italy 1201 133 12.45%
7 7 Spain 931 37 4.14%
8 8 Brazil 768 36 4.92%
9 9 Australia 654 30 4.81%
10 11 Mexico 640 36 5.96%
11 10 Switzerland 600 -7 -1.15%
12 12 Belgium 577 47 8.87%
13 13 Czech Rep. 539 18 3.45%
14 15 Netherlands 527 35 7.11%
15 14 Russia 517 23 4.66%
16 17 Japan 498 132 36.07%
17 16 Sweden 467 6 1.30%
18 19 Poland 353 31 9.63%
19 18 Argentina 342 5 1.48%
20 20 Austria 308 23 8.07%
21 21 Ukraine 260 4 1.56%
22 22 China 242 4 1.68%
23 23 Denmark 237 13 5.80%
24 25 Chile 208 4 1.96%
25 24 Norway 206 -7 -3.29%
26 26 South Africa 196 2 1.03%
27 28 Colombia 194 27 16.17%
28 27 Portugal 181 11 6.47%
29 29 New Zealand 171 5 3.01%
30 31 India 159 13 8.90%
31 30 Scotland 149 -3 -1.97%
32 32 Thailand 143 5 3.62%
33 33 Finland 130 0 0.00%
34 34 Ireland 120 11 10.09%
35 35 Slovenia 111 3 2.78%
36 36 Hungary 111 5 4.72%
37 38 Vietnam 106 13 13.98%
38 39 Croatia 104 11 11.83%
39 37 Slovakia 99 2 2.06%
40 41 Peru 99 8 8.79%
41 40 Wales 93 1 1.09%
42 42 South Korea 90 5 5.88%
43 43 Greece 86 8 10.26%
44 44 Latvia 82 5 6.49%
45 45 Romania 82 6 7.89%
46 46 Ecuador 74 0 0.00%
47 50 Serbia 73 4 5.80%
48 47 Costa Rica 70 -3 -4.11%
49 48 Phillippines 70 0 0.00%
50 49 Lithuania 70 0 0.00%
51 51 Estonia 60 0 0.00%
52 52 Bulgaria 49 3 6.52%
53 53 Belarus 41 0 0.00%
54 54 Taiwan 39 0 0.00%
55 55 Hongkong 38 0 0.00%
56 Panama 38 8 26.67%
57 57 Georgia 35 0 0.00%
58 56 Singapore 34 -4 -10.53%
59 59 Israel 34 1 3.03%
60 58 Uruguay 32 -1 -3.03%
61 60 Bolivia 31 0 0.00%
62 Northern Ireland 31 4 14.81%
63 Bosnia-Herzegovina 30 1 3.45%
64 Iceland 30 2 7.14%
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2

Thanks for continue to compile this info @omhper. It is always interesting to see how the numbers fluctuate over the years. With all the announced closures on UK forum it’s not surprising to see England’s overall go negative. Surprised to see Ukraine at a positive number, maybe some admin work to be carried out there for breweries affected by the conflict.

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3

Checking the breweries per million inhabitants, we can see that Switzerland is now dethroned, as Iceland broke the 30 brewery cut-off I use.

Breweries per milion
1 Iceland 79.73
2 Switzerland 70.37
3 Slovenia 53.62
4 Czech Rep. 50.72
5 Belgium 50.39
6 Sweden 45.72
7 Estonia 45.48
8 Latvia 42.68
9 Denmark 40.82
10 Norway 38.69
11 Austria 34.77
12 New Zealand 34.69
13 Canada 33.87
14 Netherlands 30.48
15 Wales 29.76
16 England 27.60
17 Scotland 27.47
18 Australia 25.95
19 Croatia 25.33
20 USA 25.10
21 Lithuania 25.05
22 Ireland 24.71
23 Finland 23.54
24 Germany 22.09
25 France 21.92
26 Spain 19.92
27 Italy 19.89
28 Slovakia 18.18
29 Portugal 17.59
30 Northern Ireland 16.29
31 Costa Rica 13.99
32 Hungary 11.36
33 Chile 11.09
34 Serbia 10.43
35 Georgia 9.38
36 Poland 9.18
37 Uruguay 9.09
38 Panama 8.76
39 Bosnia-Herzegovina 8.63
40 Greece 7.99
41 Argentina 7.69
42 Bulgaria 6.95
43 Ukraine 5.83
44 Singapore 5.74
45 Mexico 5.11
46 Hongkong 5.10
47 Belarus 4.33
48 Ecuador 4.32
49 Romania 4.20
50 Israel 4.06
51 Japan 3.94
52 Colombia 3.92
53 Brazil 3.66
54 Russia 3.58
55 South Africa 3.40
56 Peru 3.08
57 Bolivia 2.60
58 Thailand 2.07
59 South Korea 1.74
60 Taiwan 1.65
61 Vietnam 1.12
62 Phillippines 0.65
63 China 0.17
64 India 0.12
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4

There is still a lot of work to do. The Netherlands have more than 900 breweries at the moment, and only 500+ are registrated on this database….

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5

Yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot more breweries to be added for Russia and Ukraine too, but there are so few users here that they don’t get added.

6

Including client brewers and commissioners there are 948 Netherlands breweries listed here, but “only” 527 are physical breweries. Does your figure include also client brewers, or do we have such poor coverage of Netherlands? (I know the later is the case for Switzerland.)

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No, that is cliënt brewers inclusive. There should be around 500 functional real breweries.

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but there are still a lot of especially client brewers not in the database

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I retired a brewery in Norway today. And, there are still two more “waiting to be retired” But, there is a boom in new cideries in Norway!

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10

Well, in some countries we might need to run through the breweries and close the retired ones… I started with Slovenia yesterday.

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1,828 active physical breweries in the UK as of 1 January 2023 according to these guys

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So, we are off about 20 if you add up all the countries that make up UK. TBH, that’s probably closer than some of the countries to accuracy.

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Interesting as ever, thanks @omhper.

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Thanks for putting it together. Interesting to read.

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Do we have active Portugal admin? I highly doubt that 181 is actual number for Portugal, seems way too high.

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Vasco da Gama was probably the last Portuguese admin…

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17

Switzerland has 600 breweries? 1200+ if you ask google. While I hold BFM in high regard, I would have guessed way less. Way more in France too.

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The Switzerland situation has been covered here before. As I understand it is very easy to make the brewery “legal” because there isn’t much paperwork needed. Hence most homebrewers are official. Compare this to Estonia where it takes often year or more to get all the permits and paperwork (+you have to pay for every permit and inspection)…

That being said, when I visited Switzerland I didn’t see that many different breweries available, I assume they are very local…

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19

Yeah, not for a while I reckon - and what’s worse, there’s very little to no info covering these breweries. I took a glance at random 4-5 yesterday from the top, all needed heavy work. WIll likely make it my pet project of the week to try to reclassify them.

It’s extremely unclear for some if they are brewing themselves or somewhere else.

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20

It is both fun and frustrating…

Indeed just a small percentage of the breweries are widely distributed. Others distribute very locally, so can be hard to find, but then you randomly find them in a local produce shop or in a random cheese shop or butcher…

And some on them don’t even brew, and they just haven’t bothered de-registering…

Then there’s small, local beer festivals and you can find 10 new local breweries….

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