Only One Michigan Brewery Ranked Among Top 50 in Nation?
Get outta here...
Each year, the Brewers Association, the trade association representing small and independent American craft brewers, releases annual production figures for the U.S. craft brewing industry.
Just one Michigan brewery has been ranked among the top 50 beer producers in the nation - in fact, it's No. 8!
With SO MANY awesome breweries in the Mitten State, how is this possible?
The Brewer's Association's Chief Economist, Bart Watson, says,
2022 presented small brewers with a number of challenges, including rising operating and material costs and increasing competition, particularly in distribution. In this maturing and competitive market, collective growth for the category is hard to come by.
According to the report, in 2022 small and independent brewers collectively produced 24.3 million barrels of beer, on par with 2021 numbers. Craft's overall beer market share by volume grew to 13.2 percent from 13.1 percent the previous year. The overall beer market shrank three percent by volume in 2022.
So what's the top producing brewery in Michigan? According to the report, CANarchy, which is actually a collective of craft breweries, which includes Perrin Brewing in Comstock Park just outside Grand Rapids.
Last we heard, CANarchy was in the process of being sold to Monster Energy.
The collective also includes Cigar City in Tampa; Deep Ellum in Dallas; Oskar Blues in Lyons, Colorado; and Squatters and Wasatch in Salt Lake City.
The Top 5 craft brewing companies are:
- D.G. Yeungling an Son, Pottsville PA
- Boston Beer Co., Boston MA
- Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico CA
- Duvel Moortgat USA, Pasa Robles CA
- Gambrinus Company, Shiner TX
If you're wondering what about Bell's Brewery? (It did make the list in 2021.) Not too long ago, Bell's was sold to Lion, an Australian company that is also the parent company of New Belgium Brewing.
Now Lion did make the list of the Top 50 Overall breweries, coming in at No. 10.
The Top 5 overall brewing companies include
- Anheuser-Busch
- Molson Coors
- Constellation
- Heineken
- Pabst Blue Ribbon