After years of seemingly unlimited growth for the craft beer industry, the party is winding down.
Beer sales are down across the board and the number of breweries in Canada has started to decline, a shift driven by a mix of cost pressures and changing consumer tastes and social habits.
“A lot of us who’d been in it since the start of the small breweries knew at some point there had to be a bit of a correction,” said Ben Leon, co-founder and CEO of Dandy Brewing in Calgary.
“We weren’t going to ride this rocket ship forever.”
But while the 2010s hype around craft beer might be over, there are still businesses finding success by offering different drinks and taking a more expansive view of what a brewery can be.
WATCH | Beer sales falling across Canada:
In 2014, Leon opened his brewery’s first location inside a tiny warehouse space in the city’s north-east.
It was good timing. All over North America, millennials were going crazy for craft beer, and in Alberta, the government had recently changed rules to help microbreweries get their product to market.
“There was a huge thirst in Alberta for craft beer,” said Leon, who recalls getting emails about new breweries opening nearly every week. “It was a pretty wild time.”
A similar trend was unfolding across the country in the 2010s, with craft breweries opening at a rapid clip.
Their taprooms were popular with both customers and governments, who saw craft breweries as a source of economic stimulus and a way to revitalize rural areas and dilapidated downtowns, according to the Canadian Craft Brewers Association.
“It was almost as though anybody who had a dream of opening a brewery, or maybe who won an amateur brewing competition and they were running a little craft brewery, like, out of their garage, suddenly had the opportunity to say, ‘I’m going to get behind this,'” said Christine Comeau, the association’s executive director.
“There [was] a lot of excitement, a lot of funding behind it.”
The golden age of craft beer kept humming through the late 2010s into the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between 2017 and 2022, the number of breweries in Canada climbed from 676 to 1165, according to beer writer and analyst Jason Foster, who tracks the number.
But the party couldn’t last forever.
After years of rapid growth, the number of breweries in Canada has flattened out and started to contract, according to Foster’s analysis. The number of breweries in Canada declined by 2.9 per cent in 2025 and 3.4 per cent the year before, he said.
“The decade before, the growth was so dramatic that seeing an end to that growth, in and of itself, is significant,” said Foster, who is also an Edmonton-based university professor and think-tank director.
“You have to be on top of your game now … bad beer will kill you — a good beer won’t save you.”
Beer Canada, an industry group that represents brewers, agreed the number of breweries has levelled off and shrank slightly in 2024. It doesn’t yet have data for 2025.
Beer sales have also been declining about two per cent per year for about five years now, the group said.
And it’s not just craft brewers feeling the pinch; their larger counterparts are also dealing with a slowdown in demand.
Statistics Canada data suggests peak beer sales happened when the craft beer craze was still in its early heyday. Taking stock of the past two decades, the highest volume of retail beer sales happened around 2010, and the volume of beer sold at liquor stores and other retailers — including brewery taprooms — has been gradually waning ever since.
Calgary-based Evil Corporation Brewing had a warm reception to its cheekily named brews when it launched in 2019, but it struggled to raise funding during the pandemic to open its taproom.
By the time the space opened to the public in 2023, fascination with craft beer was waning and more customers were reaching for alternatives, like ready-to-drink cocktails — or in some cases giving up drinking altogether.
Ultimately, the brewery shuttered its doors in the spring of 2025.
“Everything bad that could happen to us, happened to us, essentially,” said the brewery’s former owner and co-founder, Quan Ly.
“We just had to cut our losses and unfortunately learn from it and move on.”
Ly said he can’t blame his customers for cutting back — he, too, gave up drinking in the past few years.
Both young people and new Canadians have a tendency to drink less than previous generations, putting pressure on both craft and larger brands, said Beer Canada president Richard Alexander.
Concerns around affordability are also making it tough to coax people out of their homes and into the taproom, he said.
According to a November survey by Angus Reid for Restaurants Canada, 56 per cent of Canadians surveyed said they were dining out less, and 30 per cent said they have cut back on alcohol purchases to save money.
“[People are] going out, in particular to restaurants and bars, less — that’s impacting sales,” Alexander said.
His association also argues Canadian beer is overtaxed, which adds another cost pressure to consumers squeezed by the high cost of living.
Others, like Comeau, argue that after years of nearly limitless growth, it’s a normal course correction to see some breweries close as the industry matures.
Even amid a tougher climate, some breweries are still succeeding by adapting to shifting consumer preferences.
While it was once enough to sell customers a bag of chips or pretzels with their pint, these days successful taprooms are essentially doubling as restaurants, Foster said, offering more and better food options.
They’re also using the size of their spaces to host events, from live music to trivia to weddings, and moving beyond the typical IPAs to offer seltzers, canned cocktails and non-alcoholic options.
Sales have dipped at Dandy Brewing in Calgary in recent years, but the brewery was still quickly filling with customers on a recent Thursday afternoon.
Co-founder Leon said in recent years the brewery has revamped its menu to focus on pizza, and it introduced a hard iced tea that has become one of its top-selling products.
In Leon’s view, the craft beer party isn’t over yet — it’s just become a bit less rowdy.
“It’s a little less balloons and party streamers and loud music at the party, and a little more sitting and talking,” he said.
