How many breweries?

[Sadfield]

I happened across a little fact early about how many breweries there were in the US in 1983 (population 233 million at the time). No googling. Put your best estimates below.

 

[Big_Eight]

~2,500?

 

[Sadfield]

Closest so far.

 

[Twostage]

Breweries or brewing companies ?

 

[Sadfield]

Breweries.

 

[Twostage]

233 ? one for each 1m people ?

 

[NormanHurst]

I think it could be low too. 83 was before craft really took off and the market would have been dominated by big players. I'll go for 25 per state. 1250.

 

[The Baron]

1500 is my guess

 

[Caramel Ox]

Must be notable for being very high or very low so my guess is 100,000.

 

[YeastFace]

I think it's really low due to all the takeovers. 850.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

2000

 

[marshbrewer]

I'm going to go for a couple per state plus a few so 125

 

[SMP Brewery]

20

 

[Sadfield]

The answer for those that want it.


There were just 80 active breweries in 1983, and less than 50 brewing companies in 1984.

https://vinepair.com/map-american-craft-brewing-history/

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Must be notable for being very high or very low so my guess is 100,000.

Way less, there's only 9-10,000 today, and this was presumably the nadir - you have to remember what a screwed up relationship with alcohol the US has. Prohibition wiped out most of the breweries in the US and takeovers in the 20th century took care of most of the rest. Homebrewing was only legalised in the 1978 at a federal level, and was still illegal in some states only 10-15 years ago.

So you're looking at dozens rather than hundreds or thousands, let alone 100k.

[ah - Sadfield beat me to it]

 

[Big_Eight]

Way less, there's only 9-10,000 today, and this was presumably the nadir - you have to remember what a screwed up relationship with alcohol the US has. Prohibition wiped out most of the breweries in the US and takeovers in the 20th century took care of most of the rest. Homebrewing was only legalised in the 1978 at a federal level, and was still illegal in some states only 10-15 years ago.

So you're looking at dozens rather than hundreds or thousands, let alone 100k.

[ah - Sadfield beat me to it]

I live in the state of Colorado but grew up in Utah and lived there from 80's to early 2000's.

Homebrewing was nearly non-existent and really wasn't legalized until 2009. Having a keg of beer in your possession was illegal (might still be). You could only buy hard liquor and beer over 3.2% abv at the state ran liquor facilities.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I live in the state of Colorado but grew up in Utah and lived there from 80's to early 2000's.

Homebrewing was nearly non-existent and really wasn't legalized until 2009. Having a keg of beer in your possession was illegal (might still be). You could only buy hard liquor and beer over 3.2% abv at the state ran liquor facilities.

I know Utah got rid of some of the really ridiculous stuff about 5-10 years ago - did they really enforce the thing about having "modesty curtains" for beer in Utah?

 

[Big_Eight]

I know Utah got rid of some of the really ridiculous stuff about 5-10 years ago - did they really enforce the thing about having "modesty curtains" for beer in Utah?

Yes, they absolutely did but the curtains were used for the actual mixing and pouring of drinks. No curtain for drinking them at least in my experience.

NPR Article

They also had a weird law that you had to have somebody who was a member of the bar/club sponsor you so you could buy drinks there if they sold hard liquor in the early 2,000's. The dumbest thing ever.

 

[Sadfield]

Decriminalisation of homebrew would suggest that homebrewing pre-existed in 1978. It's lack of transition from hobbyist to small scale commercial over a long period upto the 90's that surprised me. A couple per state would have doubled the number nationally.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Decriminalisation of homebrew would suggest that homebrewing pre-existed in 1978. It's lack of transition from hobbyist to small scale commercial over a long period upto the 90's that surprised me. A couple per state would have doubled the number nationally.

There's several factors. One is that the 1978 decriminalisation at federal level didn't mean everyone could start homebrewing, let alone going commercial - there were still all sorts of inhibitors at state level, some of which were not sorted out until the late 2010s. For instance, in some states you couldn't sell beer at the brewery without first selling it to a distributor (who took a handsome cut) and then buying it back off the distributor, even if it never left the premises. And just generally licensing breweries could be really tough as local planning people had a lot of latitude to make rules up on the spot. It's hard for non-USians to appreciate just how decentralised the US is when it comes to this kind of stuff, so decriminalisation at federal level is not the same as something being decriminalised by Westminster or Paris.

The other thing is that it takes time to develop a culture, particularly since there was no internet back then - they were dependent on a few books coming out of Britain and there was no infrastructure for the retail of homebrew supplies, which is perhaps one reason things really started in the Pacific Northwest where they had direct contact with the farmers - Bert Grant in Yakima being perhaps the most famous example.

You did get one or two in the early days - Jack McAuliffe's New Albion is generally regarded as the first microbrewery of the modern era opening in 1976, and Sierra Nevada brewed its first gyle in 1980. But it's notable how many of the early 1980s brewers picked up the bug through some connection with the UK - McAuliffe credits being stationed at the submarine base at Holy Loch as being the starting point for his journey into brewing. And I guess that even as that initial trickle of microbreweries started up, they were being matched by existing breweries closing or being taken over.