As we recently shared, the Brewers Association released 2020 data for craft beer production. You can read our full review of Pennsylvania’s numbers here. The organization, which is the countries foremost independent craft beer organization, monitors and records craft beer data for every state.

You can see a full review of our numbers through the link we shared above. However, the one number throughout the years that is most notable has been beer production in barrels. Since 2016 Pennsylvania has seen a steady decline in how much beer is being made.

The numbers by year:

2016: 3,905,620
2017: 3,724,010
2018: 3,719,475
2019: 3,606,444
2020: 3,156,074

At a decrease of over 450,000 barrels from the previous year, 2020 was the largest drop in this period of time. Almost a full 800,000 barrel drop has been recorded since 2016.

However, a drop in production shouldn’t be too alarming as the world battled a global pandemic. The Brewers Association reported drops across the board. “Overall U.S. beer volume sales were down 3% in 2020, while craft brewer volume sales declined 9%, lowering small and independent brewers’ share of the U.S. beer market by volume to 12.3%” the BA report found. You can read the full report here.

The data collected by the BA is based on craft brewery numbers. You can see how the organization defines craft breweries here. This is important to know because production data can see a serious impact when breweries are purchased by mass producers (AB InBev, MillerCoors, etc). When a brewery is acquired by a macro beer company their numbers no longer count towards a state’s production.

However, in the four years being tracked, we saw no major acquisitions in Pennsylvania that would impact these numbers. In fact, we saw the opposite. As you will see in the chart below, the number of craft breweries has grown over the four years. This means the dip in production is occurring naturally.

The chart above, while trending up, does not paint the full picture. The total number of breweries has more than doubled since 2016, starting at 205 and now currently sitting at 444. That means in 2016 each brewery was producing over 19,000 barrels of beer per year. While in 2020 that number dropped to just slightly over 7,000 barrels per brewery.

If you visit the grand openings section of our site, you will notice that we are seeing those numbers be reflected in the businesses opening. As you will see most of the breweries opening are not your large-scale production facilities and tend to lean on the smaller side. This means the state is gaining more breweries, but the breweries are producing less beer.

So what is causing the impact? It’s difficult to say. More competition is entering the market in the form of seltzers, macro breweries buying craft brands, and reports of younger generations moving away from craft beer.

It’s hard to pinpoint one specific reason. However, the numbers do tell the story of where we are currently.