Physical breweries on Ratebeer, annual year end count 2018

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1

As usual I have calculated the number of active physical breweries listed in our directory in each county.
Only those with 30 or more breweries are listed.

Overall the growth in the 48 countries that was included in the list on 2016-12-31 was 12.9%. As a comparison growth in 2017 was 13.4%.
I slight tendency that growth (percentagewise) is slowing down can be seen across most areas.

The best growth figures comes from Thailand and southeastern Europe (Croatia, Serbia, Romania).

The figures are derived as total number of Active breweries minus client brewers, commissioners and contract brewers.

Contract brewers are omitted as they are near always misclassified client brewers. I tried to go through the list of contract brewers, after checking several hundred I only found less than a handful correctly listed (that I included), so I skipped the rest.

Pos 2018 Change pos # of breweries 2018-12-31 Increase 2018 Increase 2018 %
USA 1 6561 765 11,66%
Germany 2 1702 138 8,11%
England 3 1624 73 4,50%
Canada 4 883 100 11,33%
France 5 1 872 141 16,17%
Italy 6 -1 871 91 10,45%
Spain 7 758 88 11,61%
Switzerland 8 498 72 14,46%
Australia 9 458 52 11,35%
Czech Rep. 10 426 40 9,39%
Mexico 11 2 395 70 17,72%
Brazil 12 386 55 14,25%
Sweden 13 -2 378 46 12,17%
Russia 14 376 52 13,83%
Netherlands 15 1 373 81 21,72%
Belgium 16 -1 357 46 12,89%
Japan 17 297 35 11,78%
Austria 18 260 3 1,15%
Argentina 19 252 22 8,73%
Poland 20 1 239 35 14,64%
Norway 21 -1 211 3 1,42%
China 22 207 21 10,14%
South Africa 23 194 17 8,76%
Denmark 24 186 25 13,44%
New Zealand 25 166 15 9,04%
Ukraine 26 2 165 24 14,55%
Chile 27 -1 158 8 5,06%
Scotland 28 -1 154 10 6,49%
Thailand 29 7 129 47 36,43%
Portugal 30 1 123 31 25,20%
Finland 31 2 113 23 20,35%
Wales 32 -3 110 10 9,09%
India 33 -1 104 13 12,50%
Ireland 34 -4 101 6 5,94%
Hungary 35 -1 100 11 11,00%
Colombia 36 -2 90 1 1,11%
Slovenia 36 1 90 11 12,22%
Peru 38 87 13 14,94%
Vietnam 39 1 81 10 12,35%
Slovakia 40 -1 75 3 4,00%
Croatia 41 2 69 18 26,09%
Lithuania 42 -1 64 2 3,13%
South Korea 43 1 62 13 20,97%
Romania 44 4 61 18 29,51%
Costa Rica 45 60 13 21,67%
Greece 46 -4 59 7 11,86%
Serbia 46 5 59 22 37,29%
Latvia 48 -1 54 9 16,67%
Phillippines 49 1 51 13 25,49%
Estonia 50 -5 50 3 6,00%
Ecuador 51 -2 48 8 16,67%
Belarus 52 35 5 14,29%
Hongkong 53 NEW 34 8 23,53%
Georgia 54 NEW 31 7 22,58%
9 Likes
2

…and this is the list of physical breweies per million inhabitants:
Of course gold goes to Switzerland…

Pos Breweries per milion
1 Switzerland 58,40
2 Slovenia 43,48
3 Czech Rep. 40,08
4 Norway 39,63
5 Estonia 37,90
6 Sweden 37,00
7 Wales 35,20
8 New Zealand 33,68
9 Denmark 32,04
10 Belgium 31,18
11 Austria 29,35
12 England 29,20
13 Scotland 28,39
14 Latvia 28,11
15 Canada 23,66
16 Lithuania 22,91
17 Netherlands 21,58
18 Ireland 20,79
19 Germany 20,53
20 Finland 20,46
21 USA 19,98
22 Australia 18,17
23 Croatia 16,81
24 Spain 16,22
25 Italy 14,42
26 Slovakia 13,77
27 France 12,94
28 Costa Rica 11,99
29 Portugal 11,95
30 Hungary 10,23
31 Serbia 8,43
32 Chile 8,43
33 Georgia 8,31
34 Poland 6,22
35 Argentina 5,66
36 Greece 5,48
37 Hongkong 4,56
38 Ukraine 3,70
39 Belarus 3,69
40 South Africa 3,36
41 Mexico 3,15
42 Romania 3,12
43 Ecuador 2,80
44 Peru 2,71
45 Russia 2,60
46 Japan 2,35
47 Thailand 1,86
48 Brazil 1,84
49 Colombia 1,82
50 South Korea 1,20
51 Vietnam 0,86
52 Phillippines 0,48
53 China 0,15
54 India 0,08
7 Likes
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:switzerland: :+1:

4

Relatively poor performance from the UK. Quite surprised at that.

5

There’ll be a number of UK breweries that have not been added. There are two London prewbubs that I have not got around to adding for a start.

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Thanks for pointing that out. I just went through Germany and flipped the majority of contract to client brewers and commisioners.

1 Like
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Thanks jonas, had this on my list aswell. When I when through the stats for Stats - New breweries in Germany 2018 I spotted a lot of those aswell.

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Yeah this classification is confusing for many people, I fixed Estonia last year I think, but most countries are messed up.
Estonia had actually 5 new physical breweries opening up, and at least two gypsies turning to physical breweries. 2 physical breweries were closed, rest of the changes come from the fixing the database (that’s why Estonia has +2 instead of +5).

9

Great analysis.

If you already collected the data by State/Province, can you share the same numbers for British Columbia?

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Sorry, don’t have any data on Canadian provinces. If you change state ID to zero you can get a list of all Canadian/English/German breweries, for instance https://www.ratebeer.com/breweries/alberta/0/39/

Doesn’t work for the US though. Probably a good thing…

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Yes, I see you fixed some :slight_smile:
I actually realized I made a mistake on Estonia. Now recounted to 50 (+3) and updated both tables.

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Good job!
Personally I Think the category “contract brewer” is redundant and seems to cause a lot of confusion. We should scrap that category and re-classify the few there are as Commercial Brewers, Microbrewers or Brewpubs.

1 Like
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Interesting as always, thanks.