This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/beer by /u/VinePair on 2025-06-27 19:19:52+00:00.
Consolidators. Saviors. Grim Reapers scything through once-vivid American dreams of true independence and harvesting “synergies” as they fall. Whatever you call them, they are roving these United States looking for craft breweries facing declining sales and rising rents to add to their holdings.
Earlier this week, Brewbound broke the news that Barrel One Collective — a portfolio of ~20 mostly New England-based breweries and brands including Harpoon, Long Trail, Smuttynose, and over a dozen others — was acquiring Greater Good Imperial Brewery in Worcester, Mass. The week before, Wilding Brands added Denver’s Station 26 Brewery to its stable. It became the 10th brand in a portfolio of breweries and adjacent businesses in the Rocky Mountain State, which is also where Left Hand Brewing Co. and Drydock Brewing Co. are building a “second shakeout” life raft.
This follows similar craft-on-craft roll-ups earlier this decade across the Pacific Northwest and California (e.g., Great Frontier Holdings, composed of Ninkasi Brewing, Wings & Arrow Brewing, Ashland Hard Seltzer, and Ecliptic Brewing), as well as North Carolina (see Made By The Water, which started with an acquisition of Asheville’s Catawba Brewing before sprawling across the Southeast). In regions where craft beer won its earliest converts, many formerly pioneering breweries are either rolling up, or getting rolled up themselves.