My brewery index piece looked at
which breweries are actually still open. This one is about why staying open got harder in 2025 and 2026, and it
comes down to math most drinkers never see: what a barrel of beer actually costs to make before a single pint
gets sold.
The short version, backed by real numbers below: raw materials and packaging eat 20 to 25 percent of total
production costs for a typical craft brewery, aluminum can prices are up roughly 50 percent since early 2025
because of US tariffs on aluminum, and craft production fell 4 percent in 2025 with another 4 percent drop in
the first half of 2026. Openings dropped from 518 in 2024 to just 300 in 2025. That is the story trade press
has been covering in pieces, and I wanted to put the pieces next to each other in one place.
What a Barrel of Beer Actually Costs
Per-barrel all-in production costs for a craft brewery typically run $170 to $250, according to BusinessDojo’s
2026 profitability breakdown. Raw materials (malt, hops, yeast, water treatment) and packaging together make up
20 to 25 percent of that. Healthy breweries keep cost of goods sold under 25 to 30 percent of revenue; anything
above that and margin starts disappearing fast.
- Malt, hops and yeast are the obvious inputs (I broke down what actually goes into a beer’s recipe
here if you want the full list), but BrewPlanner’s
cost-per-batch breakdown found packaging adds roughly another 36 percent on top of raw ingredient cost once you
count cans, lids, labels, carriers, case trays and CO2. - Packaging format changes the math a lot: kegs run $8 to $12 a barrel, cans run $40 to $50, bottles run $60
to $80. A brewery that switched its retail lineup from bottles to cans years ago to save money is now sitting
on the format taking the biggest price hit.
| Package format | Cost per barrel | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Kegs | $8 to $12 | Cheapest option, but locks a brewery into on-premise or draft accounts only |
| Cans | $40 to $50 | The format most small breweries lean on for retail; aluminum is the input under the most price pressure right now |
| Bottles | $60 to $80 | Highest per-barrel packaging cost of the three |
The Aluminum Problem Is Real and It Is Recent
This is the part of the story that is moving right now, not a stale trend. The Globe and Mail reported on
September 21, 2026 that North American can prices have risen roughly 50 percent since early 2025, after US
tariffs (50 percent on Canadian aluminum specifically) pushed up the Midwest aluminum benchmark that most can
contracts are priced against. CBC covered the same squeeze from inside a small Ottawa brewery a week earlier.
- Some Canadian brewers are now importing cans from China at roughly a one-third discount to US-made cans,
which is the opposite of what the tariffs were supposed to produce. - Aluminum is often the single most expensive line item in a can of beer, ahead of the beer itself.
- For a small brewery already running on thin margins, an unplanned 50 percent jump in one input is not
something you absorb quietly. It shows up as a price increase, a smaller can order, or a switch back to kegs
and taproom-only sales.
The Volume Numbers Behind the Squeeze
The Brewers Association’s own 2025 data confirms the pressure is not a feeling, it is a measured decline.
Total craft production fell 4 percent in 2025, and 60 percent of breweries reported a decline in their own
production. The slowdown continued into 2026: the BA’s midyear report put craft volume down another 4 percent
in the first half of the year against the same period in 2025.
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| New brewery openings | 518 | 300 |
| Closures | 591 | 481 |
| Craft production volume, YoY | roughly flat | -4% |
| Operating US craft breweries | - | 9,578 (-2.9% net) |
New openings falling from 518 to 300 while closures also eased from 591 to 481 tells its own story: this is
not a wave of new operators getting crushed, it is a maturing, more cautious market where fewer people are
willing to open a brewery into these costs in the first place.
Where Breweries Are Finding Room to Breathe
Trade coverage of brewery operators this year points to a few real, repeatable moves rather than one silver
bullet:
- Taproom-first economics. On-premise sales skip the distributor cut entirely, so breweries
leaning into taproom traffic keep more of every dollar than the ones chasing wide retail distribution. - Staying local on purpose. pFriem Family Brewers (Hood River, Oregon) does 95 percent of its
volume in Oregon and Washington. New Trail Brewing (Williamsport, Pennsylvania) does about 85 percent of its
volume in its home state. Both operators describe this as a deliberate choice, not a limitation, per
Brewbound’s reporting: win at home before chasing distribution in states where you have no name recognition and
have to absorb freight and distributor costs to compete. - Trimming the SKU list. Cutting slow-moving, low-margin beers frees up tank time and working
capital instead of tying both up in a beer that barely sells. It is the same discipline behind the
buying mistakes brewers keep flagging:
chasing every trend SKU instead of nailing a smaller core lineup. - Non-alcoholic and food programs as new revenue, not a side project. NA beer volume grew 111
percent between 2021 and 2025 and dollar sales grew 159 percent over the same stretch, according to the
Brewers Association, even while overall beer sales fell. It is still only 2.5 percent of total beer volume, but
that share has more than doubled in five years. I already covered which breweries are
quietly going alcohol-free and why,
and this is the financial reason behind that shift: it is one of the only beer categories still growing by
double digits.
What I Could Not Verify Per Brewery, and Why That Matters
I want to be straight about the limits of this piece before anyone quotes it. Production cost, packaging
format mix, and out-of-state distribution share are not published per brewery anywhere I could find, they exist
only as industry-wide averages from sources like the Brewers Association and BusinessDojo. My own
758-brewery dataset (built from
Google Places, Yelp and Foursquare data) can tell you whether a brewery has a food tag or how many reviews it
has, but none of the three platforms report what a brewery pays for cans or malt. If you run a brewery and want
to share real numbers on this, that is the one piece of this story I would genuinely like to add.
Community involvement, merchandise sales, and beer subscription or gifting programs are the other pieces
readers keep asking about as “what keeps a brewery open.” Those are real strategies, several show up in the
Nashville brewery scene I have covered before,
but I could not find a dataset that scores them per brewery either. Worth its own reporting pass, not something
I am going to guess at here.
More on the Breweries Behind These Numbers
If this made you want to actually find a good small brewery instead of just reading about the industry that
makes them, start with America’s best-kept secret beers,
a roundup of the small operators worth seeking out precisely because they are not household names yet. And if
you run marketing for one of these breweries, what Allagash gets right on social media (and what Bud Light got very wrong)
is worth a read, since a brewery with tight margins cannot afford the same kind of mistake a giant can shrug off.
The Numbers, and the Full Dataset
Want to see how any individual brewery in this dataset is holding up on reach, rating, and engagement alongside the cost pressure discussed above? Open the full searchable dataset, sort or filter all 758 breweries by check-ins, rating, social reach, weekly hours, or status.
Explore the Data Interactively
Switch between 2024 and 2025 to compare openings against closures directly.
Get the Raw Data
The verified cost and closure figures cited throughout this piece, with sources, are available as a CSV. Download the CSV.
FAQ
Why did craft beer production fall in 2025?
The Brewers Association recorded a 4 percent decline in total craft production for 2025, with 60 percent of
breweries reporting a decline in their own output. It tracks with a broader 5.7 percent drop in overall US beer
volume the same year, so craft actually held up better than the category as a whole, it just was not immune to
the slowdown.
Why are aluminum can prices going up for breweries?
US tariffs, including a 50 percent tariff on Canadian aluminum, pushed up the Midwest aluminum benchmark that
most can supply contracts are priced against. The Globe and Mail reported North American can prices up roughly
50 percent since early 2025 as a direct result.
What percentage of a brewery’s costs are raw materials and packaging?
Roughly 20 to 25 percent of total production costs, per BusinessDojo’s 2026 breakdown, with all-in
per-barrel costs running $170 to $250. Packaging alone can add close to 36 percent on top of raw ingredient
cost once cans, labels, carriers and CO2 are counted.
Is non-alcoholic beer actually a meaningful revenue source for breweries?
It is still small in absolute terms, 2.5 percent of total US beer volume in 2025, but it grew 111 percent in
volume and 159 percent in dollar sales between 2021 and 2025 while regular beer sales declined. That growth
rate is why more craft producers are adding NA options rather than treating it as a niche experiment.
References
- Brewers Association, “A Year of Correction for Craft Beer, With Early Signals of Recovery” (updated May 29, 2026): https://www.brewersassociation.org/association-news/a-year-of-correction-for-craft-beer-with-early-signals-of-recovery/
- Brewers Association, “2026 Midyear Report: Pressure Persists as Signs of Stability Emerge” (July 22, 2026): https://www.brewersassociation.org/association-news/2026-midyear-report-pressure-persists-as-signs-of-stability-emerge/
- Brewers Association, “Craft Beer’s Vibe Shift, Quantified” (May 11, 2026): https://www.brewersassociation.org/insights/craft-beers-vibe-shift-quantified/
- Brewers Association, “Insights & Analysis: The State of Non-Alc” (January 16, 2026): https://www.brewersassociation.org/insights/the-state-of-non-alc/
- The Globe and Mail, “How U.S. tariffs are driving Canadian brewers toward Chinese aluminum cans” (September 21, 2026): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-how-us-tariffs-are-driving-canadian-brewers-toward-chinese-aluminum/
- CBC News, “Local brewery battered by trade war as cost of aluminum cans continues to rise” (September 15, 2026): https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-local-brewery-trade-aluminum-9.7343803
- BusinessDojo, “Is a Craft Brewery Profitable? (2026)”: https://dojobusiness.com/blogs/news/craft-brewery-profitable
- BrewPlanner, “How to Calculate True Cost of Goods Sold Per Batch”: https://brewplanner.com/blog/how-to-calculate-true-cost-of-goods-sold-per-batch
- My BeerBuzz, “The Pivot: How Independent Craft Breweries Are Surviving the Post-Boom Era” (July 28, 2026): https://mybeerbuzz.com/the-pivot-how-independent-craft-breweries-are-surviving-the-post-boom-era-through-taprooms-and-tight-portfolios/
- Brewbound, “How pFriem Family Brewers and New Trail Win the Home Games” (January 22, 2026): https://www.brewbound.com/news/brewbound-podcast-how-pfriem-family-brewers-and-new-trail-win-the-home-games/
