Take a bow New Brunswick. You officially (according to me) have the most breweries (per capita) in Canada. New Brunswick and its neighbouring Atlantic provinces have witnessed the biggest brewery boom in the country over the last two years. The number of breweries grew in every province but the largest growth was found out east, in Alberta and in the Territories. Relatively speaking, Ontario lost significant ground recently.

These findings are calculations made based upon a database of breweries in Canada I maintain (gathered from a range of reliable sources). I had been doing this statistical update annually but my hiatus in 2018 led to the database falling out of date. It took A LOT more work than anticipated to get it back up to speed. Some recent analyses can be found here and here. The last post was in June 2017, so a lot has happened in the interim.

I will throw the fine points of methodology, accuracy, etc. in a footnote at the end of the post to prevent boring everyone. One significant change I should highlight is that I have stopped tracking contract breweries, so they have been dropped from the analysis (don’t worry the data is still comparable as I had always reported them separately). It became just too challenging to keep track of their comings and goings so I look at bricks and mortar breweries only. It is not a statement on whether contract breweries are a legitimate segment of the industry. It is simply a pragmatic issue of data collection.

Independent Beer Still Growing Across Canada

The big news is that in every province and territory, craft beer continues its march upward. Canada now has over 1,000 craft breweries, up from 770 a couple years back. That is a 36% growth in about three years.

In raw terms the big four (B.C., Quebec, Ontario and Alberta) made up the bulk of the increase. Saskatchewan was the quietest province, gaining only two new breweries in that time, while Manitoba started to pick up its pace by almost doubling it brewery contingent. In percent change, the Atlantic provinces stand out, with Newfoundland almost tripling its number. The table below summarized the changes.

The results show quite clearly that Alberta has joined B.C. Quebec and Ontario in the first tier of provincial beer industries, a rapid shift in the past five years. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are making an argument for the existence of a second tier.

If we shift our focus to per capita the Atlantic provinces surge ahead. Using both total population and over 15 years (the closest Statistics Canada gives us for the legal drinking age population) their numbers are eye-popping. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI are the top three provinces.

On the other end, Saskatchewan and Manitoba remain the only provinces with less than two breweries per 100,000. Unexpectedly, Ontario drops to ninth in per capita breweries, despite continuing to have the largest number of breweries.

Per capita calculations show a different tier structure. The first tier are the small population jurisdictions, including the Territories. The second tier is harder to discern. My interpretation is the second tier consists of B.C. alone, with Alberta and Quebec in a third tier. The challenging case is Ontario. Is it a trailer in the third tier or a leader in the final tier with Saskatchewan and Manitoba? We will need to watch where this goes.

Of course, a small population base makes it easier to achieve impressive ratios (take the Territories, for example) but I argue this is the fairest comparison as it takes into account the potential customer pool. The table below displays the per capita calculations

Size Matters

Of course, breweries are not created equal. Breweries in these lists range from large operations (in Canadian terms) like Big Rock, Steam Whistle and Moosehead to tiny nano-breweries serving a few kegs to a local community. I do not have the resources or access to data to include production volumes in any analysis.

But it needs to be noted that breweries per capita is an imperfect measure. Ontario may be lagging, somewhat, in the number of breweries but there is no question independent breweries make up a much larger share of the beer market in that province than, say, Newfoundland. This is a product of the breweries in Atlantic Canada being significantly smaller than many of those in Ontario.

Ideally some organization with resources and access would start compiling consistent statistics about production volume (ahem Beer Canada), but for now we can only guess. I have read reports that B.C. breweries capture up to 25% of the market there. I am less familiar with Ontario but a not-awful estimate is about 15%. Alberta is just under/around 10%. The Atlantic provinces are single digits and likely 10% is not yet in sight.

That context matters, as in many respects that is the more important indicator of how healthy the independent/craft beer industry is in a province.

No “Saturation Point” Yet

On a regular basis these days someone writes an article positing that craft beer in Canada has hit a “saturation point”, where the growth of the segment will level off and any new breweries are competing for a piece of a stagnant consumer market. The implied (sometimes explicit) implication is that we should start to see breweries closing as the industry “corrects” to its natural level.

This data shows quite unequivocally that no such saturation point has been reached anywhere in Canada. You can make a legitimate argument the growth curve in Ontario has slowed, but even there we have not yet hit “peak craft”. The independent beer industry continues to grow. And given that nowhere has the share of total beer sales even hit one-third, I have a hard time seeing us hit a ceiling anytime soon.

We will likely see closures at a higher than normal rate in the coming months (in particular over the winter), but that will be more attributable to the effects of COVID-19, which has thrown a wrench into almost every industry’s machinery. We have not yet topped out consumer interest in local beer.

Canada vs. U.S.

In previous posts I also did a Canada vs. U.S. comparison. I will do that, but felt it was best given its own stand-alone post given the length of this one already. Look for that in the coming days.

Footnote:

The statistics above include the following assumptions:

1. Only one production facility is counted per corporate entity per province. Brewpub chains and breweries with multiple locations count as one per province.
2. Contract breweries are defined as an entity that does not possess a production facility.
3. One locally-based brewery owned by a multi-national, if applicable, was included per province.

The database is compiled from a range of beer sources, including craft beer associations, beer rating websites, popular media news, beer news websites and personal collection. A special shout-out goes to Canadian Beer News for its ongoing efforts to share brewery news and to Jordan St. John for sharing his personal database of Ontario breweries.

While every effort was made to make the database as accurate as possible, I cannot guarantee the numbers reflect the actual number of breweries operating. Some breweries may be missing from the list, while some others may be incorrectly included in the list. The database only gathers from publicly available information.

All errors are mine and not the responsibility of anyone who shared information with me.