A ‘micro’ kind of craft
Another year, another 50 biggest breweries list, another shutout for Washington state.
The Brewers Association trade group last week released its annual rankings of the top-producing craft brewers nationwide, and four Oregon breweries again made the cut: Deschutes (No. 8), Full Sail (29), Rogue (30) and Ninkasi (33).
Washington breweries were again absent, which was no surprise. The state’s two largest brewers, Redhook and Elysian, aren’t counted as “craft” by the Brewers Association because of their connections to Anheuser-Busch.
Redhook is part of the Portland-based Craft Brew Alliance (CBA) – along with Widmer and Kona, among others – which is partially owned by A-B. Elysian was bought outright by Busch in 2015.
And no one else even comes close to qualifying for the Top 50 list. Washington brewers simply make less beer, and sell it closer to home, than their counterparts in states like Oregon, Colorado and California.
After Redhook – which shipped 127,200 barrels in 2016, down a whopping 32 percent from the previous year – and Elysian, which produced 89,200, the state’s next biggest brewery was Georgetown, at just under 55,000 barrels, according to Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board figures.
The rest of the top 10 drops off quickly after that: Mac & Jack’s, 43,100; Fremont, 31,300; Iron Horse, 22,600; Bale Breaker, 19,300; Silver City, 14,700; Pike, 11,500; and Fish, 11,300. No-Li was next with 11,200.
In 2015, the last year for which state-by-state numbers are available, Washington had the second-most breweries nationally with 305 – behind California’s 518 – but ranked only 15th in total production, at 426,500 barrels. That’s a rough average of 1,400 barrels per brewery, compared to 4,900 for Oregon, 6,300 for Colorado and 7,300 for California.
And 79 percent of Washington brewers produce 1,000 or fewer barrels per year, compared to 73 percent nationally, according to Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association.
Of course, bigger isn’t necessarily better. “I love this list,” the Seattle Beer News’ Geoff Kaiser writes of the Brewers Association rankings. “It reinforces the notion that for the most part you have to come to the source to get our beer.”