Brewery History

In the mid 19th century if you were drinking, you were drinking local: from one of thousands of breweries. That number shrank fairly consistently (with a brief sojourn to "zero" during Prohibition), to a nadir of 89 breweries in 1979.

It has risen since with two particular growth spurts: 500 to 1,500 in the mid-90s, and 2,000 to 8,000 in the 2010s. In 2020 number of breweries still grew but production volume fell - hard to say how the 2020s will pan out.