A report by the financial firm UHY Hacker Young on the UK craft beer market has shown that the number of new brewery openings has come to a screeching halt.
The rate of new craft breweries opening up in the UK has mirrored the trends in the U.S., with the number of independent breweries almost doubling within five years. That plummeted in 2018 with only eight new breweries opening, a dramatic drop off from 308 new breweries in 2017.
The report, detailed in The Drinks Business, stated an eerily familiar reason for the stall; the market has become “difficult for new entrants” as large-scale companies have started to buy and invest in successful “craft” breweries.
We have the first brew pub in Walsenburg, Colorado. They brew only ales and stouts. We have only been open since the end of last September, 2018. We found early in the game that the public lacked variety in types of beers. Local taverns only ever had laggers. Now we have a variety and we have a hit. Our popularity is growing rapidly. It makes no sense to brew a lagger when that was all the public had.