The Oldest Brewery in Every State in America (and DC)

The Oldest Brewery in Every State in America (and DC)

The oldest: "D. G. Yuengling & Son," founded in 1829, still goin' strong in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

This is the oldest still operating.

If this article had been written in early 1986, the winner would have been Robert Smith brewery in Philadelphia, which operated on the corner of St. John and Noble streets for 212 years (1774-1986).

The first brewery in the Colonies was Block & Christiansen's, which was founded in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) in 1612, eight years before the Pilgrims landed.

By 1810 there were 132 breweries in the young United States of America, which had only 17 states at the time with a population of seven million. (One brewery for every 53,000 people)

By 1873 the number of breweries had reached its all-time high of 4,131 in 37 states with a population of 42 million. (One brewery for every 10,000 people)

By 1978, the number had reached its post-prohibition low of 89 breweries for 222 million people. (One brewery for every two and a half million people.) Industry consolidation had thinned the herd from 857 breweries in 1941.

Today (based on the 2014 year-end stats), even with the recent explosion of microbreweries and brewpubs in the country, there are still only about 3,400 breweries for 319 million people, nowhere near the 1873 high point. (One brewery for every 94,000 people)

That is changing quickly, however. There were only about 200 microbreweries as recently as 1994. Today there are nearly 2,000. The total number of breweries has been increasing by about 500 per year in the most recent three years. We may never reach the per capita saturation level of the late 1800s since that would require more than 30,000 breweries, but we will soon pass the 1873 record for the largest total number of breweries.