Summary

• The U.S. craft beer industry posted a 5% production decline in 2025, but outperformed the overall beer market, which fell 5.7%. Craft's market share ticked up to 13.3%.¹
• More Americans drink craft beer today than at any point in history. They're drinking it less often.
• Taprooms and brewpubs are significantly outperforming distribution-focused models. The breweries that own the customer relationship are the ones surviving.
• Craft collectives are giving small breweries the distribution leverage and production efficiency they can't build alone.
• Non-alcoholic craft beer is a genuine new frontier. Athletic Brewing is now the sixth-largest craft brewery in the United States.²

Many of us don’t want craft beer to fail. We’ve spent too many Saturday afternoons in taprooms sampling a flight of beers, then digging into one for the rest of the evening. Looking at the numbers for the business coming out of 2025, it may be hard to stay optimistic but the picture is worse than it should be, and better than it looks.

What the Numbers Say

The Brewers Association released its 2025 annual figures in April 2026, and the headline is not great: craft production fell 5.1%, to 21.86 million barrels.¹ Brewery closings outpaced openings for the second consecutive year. New openings dropped sharply, from 518 in 2024 to just 300 in 2025. The number of operating U.S. craft breweries fell to 9,578.

In 2025, beer volume dropped 5.7%, while craft beer fell 5.1%, giving craft a slight gain in market share from 13.2% to 13.3%. Retail dollar value declined 3.6% to $27.8 billion, but craft maintained its 24.6% share of beer sales. ¹ The dollar value stayed steadier because more craft beer was sold in taprooms and brewpubs, where revenue per pint is higher than store-bought six-packs.

There’s one more number worth taking hope from. Per 2024 Scarborough data cited by the Brewers Association, 9.8% of legal drinking age adults consumed craft beer in the past 30 days, up from 6.6% in 2013.³ More Americans drink craft beer today than at any point in the category’s history. They’re drinking it less often. That is a very different problem than losing drinkers, and the industry’s best operators understand the distinction.

Why People Are Drinking Less

Nearly half of Americans said they planned to drink less alcohol in 2025, a 44% increase from 2023.⁴ Among Gen Z the number is starker: 65% planned to cut back, and 39% committed to a fully dry lifestyle, not just for January but year-round.⁴ Younger Americans are drinking roughly a third less beer and wine than previous generations consumed at the same age.⁵

The craft beer industry faces notable challenges. Its initial consumer demographic continues to age, while its prospective replacement audience is recognized as one of the most abstinent generations in contemporary American history.

But here is where it gets interesting. Over 90% of Athletic Brewing’s customers—the leading non-alcoholic craft beer brand in the United States—also consume alcoholic beer.⁶ This suggests that non-alcoholic craft beer is not drawing consumers away from traditional products; rather, it acts as an introduction to the category or enables current drinkers to participate on occasions when they might otherwise abstain.

The Brewers Association noted in its year-end 2025 report that some consumer research indicates people expect to socialize more in the year ahead, which it called “always a good sign for craft beer.”⁷ Craft beer has always been, at its core, a social product. The fundamentals of why people drink it have not changed.

Where Craft Is Actually Winning

The industry’s performance data in 2025 broke cleanly along one line: do you own the room where your beer is consumed?

Brewpubs declined just 1.7% in production. Taprooms fell 3.9%. Microbreweries focused on distribution fell 8.9%.⁸ That seven-point spread between brewpubs and distribution-focused operations is significant.

Davin Helden, CEO and co-founder of Liquid Mechanics Brewing in Lafayette, Colorado, put it plainly in a conversation with CU Boulder researchers: “The profit is in pulling pints. Distribution reminds people we exist. But the taproom is where the relationship is built.”⁹

His brewery’s numbers in 2025 were essentially flat, which he described as “kind of the new growth.” While other Colorado breweries saw much steeper declines, Liquid Mechanics held its taproom traffic. Helden also offered one of the most honest observations about how drinking habits have shifted: “It’s the same people coming in, at the same frequency. But they’re drinking less.”⁹

Breweries that have built genuine community around their taprooms are the ones holding it.

Running Together in Packs: The Collective Strategy

Perhaps the most structurally interesting development in 2025 and early 2026 is the wave of craft brewery collectives forming across the country. This isn’t new, but the current wave is different from what came before, and the BevNET March-April 2026 issue captured it well.¹¹

A decade ago, craft collectives aimed for premium acquisitions, as seen when Constellation bought Ballast Point for $1 billion in 2015. Now, macro brewers are selling those brands, often to Tilray, at much lower prices. Today’s collectives focus on shared production, unified sales teams, and gaining distribution leverage by offering larger volumes.

Sam Hendler, co-founder of Hendler Family Brewing, which includes Jack’s Abby, Night Shift, and Wormtown, described the shift at a Brewbound Live panel in December 2025: “It’s a totally different conversation when you’re walking into the room to talk about 40,000 cases versus walking into the room talking about 400,000 cases, and you get meaningfully more attention.”¹¹

The Oregon Beverage Collective, formed in February 2026 by five Bend-based brands including Crux Fermentation Project and GoodLife Brewing, represents the same logic applied to a market facing distributor consolidation. Their combined volume puts them among the top 60 craft breweries in the country.¹¹ Each brand keeps its identity. The shared infrastructure is what changes.

Andrew Blake, CEO of Blake’s Beverage (a hard cider collective), offered the most honest assessment of how hard this is: “It’ll take twice as long as you think, it’ll be twice as expensive, and the synergies will be about half of what you expected at the onset.”¹¹ He said it without apology.

The Non-Alcoholic Turn

Athletic Brewing is now the sixth-largest craft brewery in the United States.² It was eighth last year. It holds 52% of the U.S. non-alcoholic craft beer market, outselling the next 100 NA craft brands combined, and holds 36% of all on-premise NA beer sales in America.¹² NA beer as a category grew 111% by volume from 2021 to 2025. On-premise, NA IPAs grew over 170% year-over-year; NA stouts grew 130%.¹⁰

Advances in vacuum distillation and reverse osmosis have largely closed the taste gap that made early NA beer so forgettable. Athletic alone produces more than 50 different NA brews annually. The global NA beer market is projected to nearly double from $22.1 billion in 2026 to $43.9 billion by 2036.¹²

Research shows as we touched on earlier, that people who drink Athletic also drink craft beer. NA gives them a way to stay in the ritual on the nights they’re not drinking. It keeps them in taprooms. It keeps them ordering rounds.

Culture is what craft beer has always had over big beer. Protecting and expanding that culture, even for people who aren’t having a second pint, is how the category stays relevant to the next generation of drinkers.

The Case for Craft Beer

Is there hope for those of us who love craft beer? Yes. But it’s not the hope of a return to the boom years. Too much craft beer was being made by too many people chasing the same trends in the same distribution channels. The correction was painful and it was probably necessary.

There is optimism regarding the transition to the current era, which is characterized by breweries fostering genuine loyalty within their communities. The emergence of a non-alcoholic segment is attracting new participants to craft culture, expanding rather than diminishing its reach. Additionally, an increasing number of brewers recognize that producing high-quality beer is a fundamental requirement.

The Brewers Association’s staff economist Matt Gacioch put it this way in April 2026: “The industry outlook points towards cautious optimism, as shifting trends offer hope for a more stable path forward after several challenging years.”¹

Sources

Is There Hope for Those of Us Who Still Love Craft Beer?

Summary

What the Numbers Say

Why People Are Drinking Less

Where Craft Is Actually Winning

Running Together in Packs: The Collective Strategy

The Non-Alcoholic Turn

The Case for Craft Beer

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