Updated on April 15, 2024

Since January, we’re down seven physically located breweries. Big Rig’s restaurants in the GTA have closed. We’re down several Clocktower locations. While there are a number of breweries for sale out there including TAPS in Niagara and Copperworks in Bowmanville, one of the more obvious things that is happening is that the few breweries that are opening are getting a little smaller in volume. Test Batches is named that for a reason. One time in The Growler, I referred to some of these as “single car garage” breweries. 

We’re down to 382 breweries, 381 when Louis Cifer shutters later this month. The number is actually smaller if you consider ownership structures as demonstrated above, but how am I meant to represent that on a map? Colour coding? Spearhead and Skeleton Park share a building. Junction/Woodhouse. High Park/Lost Craft. How many is that actually?

Some of them are just taprooms with to-go fridges. Take my word for it. 14 breweries opened in 2023, but the high point that we have ever seen was January 2023 at 413 physical entities.

In January we had 42 contract breweries continuing to exist. It might be less than that now, but I haven’t been through the list recently. My feeling is that some of them are probably on their way out, because the LCBO seems less willing to stock vanity brands than they used to. This is, from many perspectives, a good thing.

Hey. You wanna see something neat? That’s right. Conditional spreadsheet formatting. 

Leave a tip, because I’d love to get Sweet William a new dangly feather toy.