Annual year end brewery count 2023

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1

A few days delayed due to travel, here is the annual year and physical brewery count.
I’m only counting active physical breweries (hence no commissioner or client brewers). As the category “contract brewers” is incorrectly used in most cases, also these are omitted.

Only using the data for countries with 30+ breweries

This year the number of counted active breweries from these countries grew by 4.2%, which is the lowest figure so far. Most countries saw a moderate growth, with Canada and Japan as exceptions.
A few countries saw a significant drop, such as Finland, Ireland and Slovenia. Northern Ireland actually feel out of the list, as it dropped from 31 to 29 breweries.

I am sure these figures are largely affected by RB coverage, how active admins is to retire closed breweries and how accurate the brewery type is listed, but here goes this year’s list:

Pos 2023 Pos 2022 Country # of breweries Increase 2023 Increase 2023 %
1 1 USA 8451 209 2.54%
2 2 Germany 1874 43 2.35%
3 3 England 1596 61 3.97%
4 4 France 1562 85 5.75%
5 5 Canada 1430 166 13.13%
6 6 Italy 1250 49 4.08%
7 7 Spain 947 16 1.72%
8 8 Brazil 779 11 1.43%
9 9 Australia 710 56 8.56%
10 10 Mexico 676 36 5.62%
11 11 Switzerland 627 27 4.50%
12 12 Belgium 619 42 7.28%
13 16 Japan 589 91 18.27%
14 14 Netherlands 571 44 8.35%
15 13 Czech Rep. 558 19 3.53%
16 15 Russia 557 40 7.74%
17 17 Sweden 481 14 3.00%
18 18 Poland 362 9 2.55%
19 19 Argentina 348 6 1.75%
20 20 Austria 332 24 7.79%
21 21 Ukraine 277 17 6.54%
22 23 Denmark 246 9 3.80%
23 22 China 245 3 1.24%
24 24 Chile 208 0 0.00%
25 26 South Africa 206 10 5.10%
26 27 Colombia 205 11 5.67%
27 25 Norway 199 -7 -3.40%
28 29 New Zealand 188 17 9.94%
29 28 Portugal 186 5 2.76%
30 30 India 156 -3 -1.89%
31 32 Thailand 150 7 4.90%
32 31 Scotland 149 0 0.00%
33 33 Finland 118 -12 -9.23%
34 35 Hungary 114 3 2.70%
35 34 Ireland 112 -8 -6.67%
36 37 Vietnam 110 4 3.77%
37 39 Peru 109 10 10.10%
38 36 Slovenia 103 -8 -7.21%
39 38 Croatia 102 -2 -1.92%
40 40 Slovakia 100 1 1.01%
41 41 Wales 98 5 5.38%
42 42 South Korea 96 6 6.67%
43 43 Greece 91 5 5.81%
44 45 Latvia 91 9 10.98%
45 44 Romania 85 3 3.66%
46 48 Phillippines 79 9 12.86%
47 47 Serbia 76 3 4.11%
48 46 Ecuador 74 0 0.00%
49 50 Costa Rica 73 3 4.29%
50 49 Lithuania 70 0 0.00%
51 51 Estonia 58 -2 -3.33%
52 52 Bulgaria 58 9 18.37%
53 53 Belarus 42 1 2.44%
54 54 Taiwan 39 0 0.00%
55 55 Hongkong 38 0 0.00%
56 60 Uruguay 38 6 18.75%
57 56 Georgia 37 2 5.71%
58 57 Israel 36 2 5.88%
59 58 Singapore 35 1 2.94%
60 59 Panama 33 0 0.00%
61 63 Bosnia-Herzegovina 32 2 6.67%
62 61 Bolivia 31 0 0.00%
63 64 Iceland 31 1 3.33%
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And here is list sorted per million inhabitants (by available data 2018)

Pos Country Breweries per milion
1 Iceland 82.39
2 Switzerland 73.53
3 Belgium 54.06
4 Czech Rep. 52.50
5 Slovenia 49.76
6 Latvia 47.36
7 Sweden 47.09
8 Estonia 43.97
9 Denmark 42.37
10 Canada 38.32
11 New Zealand 38.14
12 Austria 37.48
13 Norway 37.38
14 Netherlands 33.03
15 Wales 31.36
16 England 28.70
17 Australia 28.17
18 Scotland 27.47
19 USA 25.73
20 Lithuania 25.05
21 Croatia 24.84
22 France 23.18
23 Ireland 23.06
24 Germany 22.61
25 Finland 21.37
26 Italy 20.70
27 Spain 20.26
28 Slovakia 18.37
29 Portugal 18.07
30 Costa Rica 14.59
31 Hungary 11.67
32 Chile 11.09
33 Serbia 10.85
34 Uruguay 10.80
35 Georgia 9.92
36 Poland 9.42
37 Bosnia-Herzegovina 9.21
38 Greece 8.45
39 Bulgaria 8.23
40 Argentina 7.82
41 Panama 7.61
42 Ukraine 6.21
43 Singapore 5.91
44 Mexico 5.39
45 Hongkong 5.10
46 Japan 4.66
47 Belarus 4.43
48 Romania 4.35
49 Ecuador 4.32
50 Israel 4.30
51 Colombia 4.14
52 Russia 3.85
53 Brazil 3.71
54 South Africa 3.57
55 Peru 3.39
56 Bolivia 2.60
57 Thailand 2.17
58 South Korea 1.86
59 Taiwan 1.65
60 Vietnam 1.16
61 Phillippines 0.74
62 China 0.18
63 India 0.12
4 Likes
3

Hmmm. Reminds me I need to check whether several breweries have been closed on RB :frowning:

4

I just retired 20 meaderies after reading this, sorry.

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Meaderies (like cideries and sake producers) are not counted here anyway.

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Estonia has at least a couple more closing. I haven’t closed them yet because the beers are available in shops as they are selling the old stock.

7

I’d be interested to see the same stats for cideries!

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Well, it’s free for everyone to compile it - and it is a lot easier to do so for cideries :wink:

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Nice statistics. Indeed depending on RateBeer information. Over here in The Netherlands we have a group of enthousiast collecting detailed information. (www.nederlandsebiercultuur.nl) Their statistics show less positive information. (Green = number of physical breweries)
image

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From ratebeer, the Netherlands cidery stats are:
Up to 2022 = 46
2023 = 48, i.e. +2 or +4%

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My guess is the number of breweries in the US is getting more and more inaccurate at time goes on. Lots of new breweries here end up not getting added.

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I agree @blipp. When I come over I often find new breweries that haven’t been on the data base, loads of beers not on here either.

<*))))))><

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