U.S. Licensed Brewerys

What the Data Shows for U.S. Brewerys

The federal TTB permittee registry currently lists 4,881 active brewerys operating in the United States. Federally permitted breweries producing malt beverages including beer, ale, and lager. Includes craft breweries, microbreweries, and brewpubs. Every row in the ranking table below reflects a federally licensed facility — not a state-level estimate, not an industry-association count, and not a marketing roll-up. Brewery counts here include production breweries that hold a Brewer's Notice; brewpub and taproom counts reported by trade associations may differ because they classify facilities by retail posture rather than federal license class.

Geographic concentration is the single most useful signal in state-level rankings. California leads with 404 active brewerys, followed by Texas (316) and New York (292). Those clusters usually reflect a combination of climate (for wineries), favorable state ABC licensing rules (for breweries and distilleries), and local capital access for facility build-out. A state's ranking here is a lagging indicator of 5–10 years of regulatory and market conditions, not a snapshot of current growth.

Federal brewery counts should be read alongside state-level context. The TTB regulates production, labeling, and federal excise tax; each state's Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) authority regulates licensing, retail sale, distribution, and state-level excise. A state with many TTB brewerys but restrictive ABC rules (direct-shipping bans, franchise-distribution laws, taproom caps) can have a crowded producer side and a constrained retail side at the same time. For public-health comparisons, NIAAA (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) tracks consumption independently — producer counts do not map cleanly to per-capita drinking or alcohol-related harm.