The American beer industry is facing a rocky start to the new year as long-term volume declines begin to solidify. According to the Beer Institute’s latest unofficial estimate, taxable removals for the full year of 2025 finished 5.9% lower than the previous year, a downward trend that has bled directly into a lackluster January. Taxable removals for the first month of 2026 reached only 9,600,000 barrels—a sharp 9.4% decrease from December’s figures.
While nearly ten million barrels of beer is a substantial volume, the month-over-month drop from December 2025’s 10.5 million barrels suggests that “Dry January” might be evolving from a personal resolution into a macroeconomic fixture.
This American slump isn’t happening in a vacuum. Across the Atlantic, the story is remarkably similar; Europe’s beer industry has warned of lost momentum as brewery numbers begin to plateau after a decade of explosive growth. It seems that the “golden age” of brewery expansion is facing a synchronized global cooldown, with both American and European markets struggling to find the next gear.
However, if you zoom out far enough, the long-term prognosis remains surprisingly bubbly. While American removals are currently sluggish, analysts project the global beer market will see a 7% CAGR through 2035, driven largely by a continued surge in the craft sector and emerging markets. For the big American players, the challenge is navigating this “plateau” until that long-term growth trickles down to the taxable removal reports.
A significant engine behind this projected global rebound is the meteoric rise of the “zero-proof” category. While traditional barrelage stays flat, the non-alcoholic beer market is expected to reach “stout” proportions over the next decade as consumer preferences shift toward health-conscious alternatives. This pivot suggests that while the “taxable removal” of alcohol-containing beer is dipping, the actual volume of malt-based beverages being consumed may simply be migrating to a different column of the ledger.
The Beer Institute, which has served as the industry’s primary pulse-check since the U.S. Brewers Association was founded in 1862, typically releases these “unofficial” estimates ahead of formal figures from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). While these numbers often face minor technical revisions, they provide a blunt look at the current appetite for American brew.
The industry remains a titan, supporting 2.4 million jobs and contributing over $471 billion to the economy, but the 2026 starting blocks are looking a little leaner than brewers might have hoped. To put it clearly: people are simply drinking less beer right now, even if the ten-year forecast promises a refill.