# of Brewers vs Distributors in the US

*data from the Beer Institute's website

This is a pretty interesting chart.  The purple line is the number of breweries in the US since 1887.  At the end of 2011, there were 2309 breweries operating in the US, the most since 1887 and a far cry from the low of 45 in 1978 (god those were awful days).

However, even more interesting is the blue line.  That's the number of distributors operating in the US.  From a high of 17,630 in the years right after Prohibition, consolidation has whittled the numbers down to only 2,040 distributors left in the US.  Yes, there are now more breweries than distributors in the US.