Craft beer – production fell 5.1% and 481 breweries closed. Is it all doom and gloom?

US craft beer has been declining for long enough now that the conversations happening inside the industry have changed. The question used to be when growth would return. Increasingly, the question is what the category looks like at a permanently smaller scale – and who survives to define it. The Brewers Association confirmed craft beer production fell 5.1% in 2025, the steepest decline outside of the pandemic. Three hundred breweries opened that year, the lowest number in over a decade. Four hundred and eighty-one closed.

The corporate consolidation happening simultaneously makes those closure numbers more commercially significant. Tilray disclosed in its annual 10-K filing on 28 July 2026 that Project 420 – its restructuring programme for the beverage division – includes the closure and consolidation of brewing facilities across Terrapin, Redhook, Atwater, Hop Valley, and Revolver. Terrapin’s Athens, Georgia brewery stops brewing on 25 September. Atwater was already sold back to its founder in June. These are brands Tilray acquired from AB InBev in 2023 and from Molson Coors in September 2024. Within twelve months of the Molson Coors deal closing, the production infrastructure behind those brands is being dismantled.