Inside the list: These fast-growing craft brewers bubble up steady growth in Arizona
Many words can be used to describe Arizona, but thirsty is the one that has numbers backing it. Craft beer production has been steadily increasing for the past five years, according to the total of the 25 largest craft beer breweries in the state, as provided to the Business Journal by the Brewers Association.
Article originally posted here.
Overall, craft beer consumption would have increased in each of the past six years, but the No. 1 brewery on the 2014 list, Four Peaks Brewing, was acquired by Anheuser-Busch InBev the following year. Craft beer aficionados no longer count the brewery as one of their own, and with the Tempe brewery’s production (58,630 barrels in 2014) off the annual count, the list total dropped from 137,102 in 2015 to 95,446 the following year.
By 2018 the total had reached 146,576 barrels, and this year’s list shows a total of 158,132 barrels produced in 2019, easily making up for what we’ll call the “Four Peaks effect.”
According to the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild website, there are 110 breweries in the state. Together they account for 9,279 jobs and a total economic impact of more than $1.1 billion.