Year end brewery count 2020

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1

Same procedure as every year - I have compiled the number of physical breweries (no cideries/meaderies/sake producers, nor client brewers or comssioners) in each country.
Note that also contract brewers are omitted as nearly all of those are mislabelled client brewers - can’t understand why we still list contract brewers…)

I have only listed countries with 30+ breweries.
Overall there is an increase of 1783 breweries in these countries, up 7.1% in the year. The trend is falling: 2017: 14.0%, 2018: 12.9%, 2019: 8.6%.

Main contributor to this drop is declined growth in the US (down to 4.3% compared to 2017: 14.7%, 2018: 11.6%, 2019: 9.7%) and a sharp decline across Britain (England, Scotland and Wales all down by 4-6%). Elsewhere in Europe and above all Latin America the growth is healthy.

Whether these number actually reflects the number of active brewers is of course a different story…

Pos 2020 Change Country 2020 Increase 2020 Increase 2020 %
1 0 USA 7494 306 4,26%
2 0 Germany 1860 176 10,45%
3 0 England 1564 -96 -5,78%
4 1 Canada 1174 160 15,78%
5 -1 France 1170 141 13,70%
6 0 Italy 1054 85 8,77%
7 0 Spain 884 66 8,07%
8 1 Australia 582 72 14,12%
9 -1 Switzerland 572 45 8,54%
10 1 Mexico 514 68 15,25%
11 -1 Czech Rep. 505 34 7,22%
12 0 Brazil 496 58 13,24%
13 2 Netherlands 476 59 14,15%
14 -1 Belgium 466 46 10,95%
15 -1 Russia 463 43 10,24%
16 0 Sweden 452 42 10,24%
17 0 Japan 353 18 5,37%
18 0 Poland 334 55 19,71%
19 1 Argentina 319 62 24,12%
20 -1 Austria 277 5 1,84%
21 2 Ukraine 242 42 21,00%
22 -1 China 237 18 8,22%
23 1 Denmark 213 25 13,30%
24 -2 Norway 206 -13 -5,94%
25 1 South Africa 199 37 22,84%
26 -1 Chile 189 25 15,24%
27 0 New Zealand 176 17 10,69%
28 1 Portugal 168 26 18,31%
29 1 Colombia 153 14 10,07%
30 -2 Scotland 144 -9 -5,88%
31 1 India 143 11 8,33%
32 -1 Thailand 138 2 1,47%
33 0 Finland 117 9 8,33%
34 0 Ireland 113 7 6,60%
35 0 Hungary 107 3 2,88%
36 0 Slovenia 105 3 2,94%
37 1 Peru 99 9 10,00%
38 1 Vietnam 96 9 10,34%
39 -2 Wales 94 -4 -4,08%
40 0 Slovakia 91 13 16,67%
41 0 Croatia 87 10 12,99%
42 0 South Korea 85 8 10,39%
43 0 Romania 74 4 5,71%
44 0 Greece 73 7 10,61%
46 3 Ecuador 70 12 20,69%
45 5 Phillippines 70 17 32,08%
47 1 Latvia 69 9 15,00%
48 -3 Lithuania 68 4 6,25%
49 -2 Serbia 68 6 9,68%
50 -4 Costa Rica 66 2 3,13%
51 0 Estonia 57 4 7,55%
52 0 Belarus 39 0 0,00%
53 0 Hongkong 38 2 5,56%
54 2 Bulgaria 36 4 12,50%
55 -1 Georgia 35 0 0,00%
56 1 Uruguay 35 3 9,38%
57 -2 Taiwan 34 1 3,03%
58 0 Israel 31 1 3,33%
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And here is the list of physical breweries per million of inhabitants.
Note that I have not updated the population count since 2018, because lazy.
Quite big changes near the top. Sweden up three places to 4th, Norway down three to 7th. Wales falling from 7th 2019 (2nd 2018) to 13th 2020.

Switzerland still reigning supreme, despite lack of Bov entering breweries, so this number does not nearly reflect the true number of Swiss brewers.

Pos Country Breweries per milion
1 Switzerland 67,08
2 Slovenia 50,72
3 Czech Rep. 47,52
4 Sweden 44,25
5 Estonia 43,21
6 Belgium 40,70
7 Norway 38,69
8 Denmark 36,69
9 Latvia 35,91
10 New Zealand 35,70
11 Canada 31,46
12 Austria 31,27
13 Wales 30,08
14 England 28,12
15 Netherlands 27,53
16 Scotland 26,54
17 Lithuania 24,34
18 Ireland 23,27
19 Australia 23,09
20 USA 22,82
21 Germany 22,44
22 Croatia 21,19
23 Finland 21,19
24 Spain 18,92
25 Italy 17,45
26 France 17,37
27 Slovakia 16,71
28 Portugal 16,32
29 Costa Rica 13,19
30 Hungary 10,95
31 Chile 10,08
32 Uruguay 9,95
33 Serbia 9,71
34 Georgia 9,38
35 Poland 8,69
36 Argentina 7,17
37 Greece 6,78
38 Ukraine 5,43
39 Bulgaria 5,11
40 Hongkong 5,10
41 Belarus 4,12
42 Mexico 4,10
43 Ecuador 4,08
44 Romania 3,79
45 Israel 3,70
46 South Africa 3,45
47 Russia 3,20
48 Colombia 3,09
49 Peru 3,08
50 Japan 2,79
51 Brazil 2,36
52 Thailand 1,99
53 South Korea 1,65
54 Taiwan 1,44
55 Vietnam 1,01
56 Phillippines 0,65
57 China 0,17
58 India 0,11
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3

We are pretty much on top of the closed real breweries in the UK, the tricky ones are the commissioners / clients, but you are not counting those, so that’s okay. Covid has had an effect and will continue to do so with virtually all our pubs shut.

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My fear is that, the reason why figures for Britain (and Norway) is worse than elsewhere, is that admins are more on top of closures there then elsewhere…

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5

Back during lockdown #1 I went through all the English breweries and then asked for a number of breweries to be closed. Most closed prior to 2020. Suspect that it’s a similar situation for other breweries that have been closed during 2020.

I was surprised at the minus figure because I am regularly adding on new breweries… a couple a month… however this perhaps reflects the trend for client breweries and comissioners.

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6

Great to see these stats agin.

Adds weight to the argument (if one was needed) to break down other European countries into regions…

Also agree, England probably reflects active admins and raters.

Can’t wait to see what 2021 brings.

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Thanks!
As for breakdown, yes there are several countries with serious clutter in bad need of splitting.
RB is falling behind competition here. For instance brewver.com has already split around 35 countries.

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8

Just get everyone to get their ratings over there and it doesn’t matter that ABInbev are slow in splitting countries. =)

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Yeah but user generated databases are by nature based on user content. Not sure I have the time to add that many beers to a database. And if I do, and so do others, then we end up with duplicates.

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Quaffable features lists of brewery openings and closures by year. This is for the UK. I believe that it doesn’t feature client breweries, etc.

Openings:

2010 - 101

2011 - 141

2012 - 184

2013 - 194

2014 - 209

2015 - 243

2016 - 247

2017 - 219

2018 - 179

2019 - 134

2020 - 30

Closed Breweires:

2010 - 25

2011 - 31

2012 - 39

2013 - 35

2014 - 48

2015 - 84

2016 - 124

2017 - 119

2018 - 144

2019 - 105

2020 - 24

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Looks like Rick is a bit behind on 2020 closures, he does a lot of catching up from us.

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I reckon we’ve had 65 closures v 74 new breweries this year in England… obviously a number of these will be accounted for on Quaffable as they opened/closed in prior years.

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Had a quick look at that site, and it seems to have serious problems. For example seaching for “Latvia” brought up Slaterr’s Maravilla from Stafford, England as one of the top hits ! [ Looked at the reviews of the beer, and couldn’t see any season for it ]

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To be fair a search for Latvia on Ratebeer doesn’t bring up that many Latvian beers as the top results.

I’d say that overall search isn’t an easy thing and there are things that could improve in that area on most sites.

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Estonia number is also correct. Only one closure (Viru Õlu: 3rd biggest brewer in Estonia, owned by Harboe). All 5 new breweries are very small (one of them does 120L batches, one of them brews only 1 type of kvass, one only brews 1 beer for one 1 bar etc.)

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