The UK’s Top Up-And-Coming Brewers 2024

In spite of craft beer companies facing notable challenges in recent years, the wider brewing industry is still doing well, and many well-known faces have even had their go at making a beer or two. Notably, Jeremy Clarkson produced a beer with Hawkstone, with the brewers recently making the Sunday Times Hundred. For the third year in a row, Beauhurst had the privilege of helping to craft the Sunday Times ranking. Find out more in our article: The Sunday Times Hundred x Beauhurst.

Hawkstone came 24th in the prestigious high-growth list, and had an annual sales growth over three years of 142.8% — and it was the only brewery to make this high-growth list.

With news of Hawkstone lager going global, we decided it was time to take a look at the UK’s brewing industry; Clarkson’s beer isn’t the only one making a splash on the UK market. Read on to find out which region has the most breweries, the levels of investment going into the brewing industry, and to discover the UK’s up-and-coming breweries.

The UK’s brewing landscape

The UK’s brewing industry has seen a steady increase in active companies over the past decade, which at the end of 2023 reached 1,623.

However, we’ve seen a drop in the investment being made into breweries in 2023. The rise and fall of investment into breweries is tumultuous, for example in Q2 2017 there was an unprecedented £215m invested into breweries, more than we’ve ever seen before or since. That’s 341% higher than the second amount ever invested in a quarter which was £48.7m (in Q2 2018).

So, what happened in Q2 2017? Brewdog received a huge investment from TSG Consumer Partners which made up the majority of this high figure — £213m.

In 2024, we’ve seen 17 fundraisings across breweries this year so far, and £9.54m invested. Considering we’re half way through the year, the numbers aren’t necessarily down on last year where breweries raised a total of £17.3m across 44 funding rounds.

Which UK region brews the most beer?

Using our data, we found there are currently 1,621 active breweries in the UK, a large portion of which are headquartered in England — 76%. The South East has the highest number of breweries, equating to 16.5% of the UK’s brewing industry. London comes in second place making up 12.8% of the UK’s active breweries.

Scotland has 119 active breweries which equates to 7.3% of the breweries across the UK. The East of Scotland has the highest number in Scotland, coming to 2.2% of UK breweries, and the South of Scotland had the fewest number across the whole of the UK, with just 0.5%.

Wales has 4.1% of the UK’s breweries, whilst Northern Ireland makes up just 1.1%.

Gender disparity in brewery founders

From our list of upcoming breweries, all founders were male — and when we look at our data from all breweries across the UK, 61.2% of the companies have an all male director team, and 9.5% are majority male. Just 21.6% are run by an all female director team.

But we kept digging and from our data we found three UK brewing companies that are 100% female-founded.

Hiver Beers was founded by Hannah Rhodes, and creates honey beers. The company is currently in its seed stage and has attended the Mayor’s International Business Programme. WEST Brewery, based in Glasgow, was founded by Petra Wetzel in 2006. It produces a range of German-inspired wheat beers and lagers. Good Living Brew Co was founded by Danielle Bekker, and whilst the company is now in zombie stage, the brewery’s botanical beer is still available through third party sites.

What’s the UK’s favourite (UK) beer company?

It’s not easy to work out which UK brewery is the most popular — for every real ale enthusiast, there’s always a craft advocate. But if we look at companies which had the most equity funding in total, we can certainly get an idea of which breweries are getting a higher amount of investment.

Top of the list is Brewdog. This Scottish unicorn certainly made a name for itself, and with a total of £320m invested, it’s no surprise its beer is stocked in every pub, bar and supermarket shelf.

Next is Portobello Brewing Company. This London brewing company has raised a total of £40.5m and earlier this year acquired Darwin and Wallace, a bar and restaurant group.

And in third place, Beavertown. Another London-based company, Beavertown is a common name in any pub. It raised £40m in just one round. The company exited by acquisition in September 2022, and was bought by Heineken.

Popular non-alcoholic brewers

A relatively new market, non-alcoholic or zero alcohol beers are becoming more and more popular both in the UK and globally. So, we felt like we couldn’t bring you the top brewers without looking at the companies brewing low or no alcohol beers.

If you’ve ever done dry January, or just fancied a low or no alcohol beer, you’ve probably heard of Lucky Saint. With a staggering eight funding rounds, this non-alcoholic beer company has managed to get ahead of other competitors, raising £21.5m. This is 554% more than the non-alcoholic beer company that comes into second place, IMPOSSIBREW, which has raised £3.29m.

While we only found 19 active non-alcoholic brewing companies (this doesn’t include companies that distil non-alcoholic spirits), this number is still increasing sharply. In 2016, there were just five active non-alcoholic breweries, and while numbers are small, that’s still a 208% increase.

Top ten up-and-coming brewers

To select our top brewers, we have ranked companies by the amount raised in its most recent fundraising.