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.
Methodology
- Headquartered in the UK
- Active on Companies House
- In the ‘alcohol’ industry
- Include ‘beer’ in their company description — this specifically helped us disclude companies that produce alcohol but are not a brewery
To create our list of up-and-coming brewers, we looked at breweries that have gained equity investment in 2023 and 2024. Companies were ranked by how much equity they have raised in 2023 and 2024. We have excluded companies that didn’t brew their own beer.
It is worth noting that breweries do not produce cider.
The UK’s brewing landscape
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.
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.
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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.
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Top ten up-and-coming brewers
To select our top brewers, we have ranked companies by the amount raised in its most recent fundraising.
10.
Local
Location: London
Number of employees: <5
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £110k
Local produces a low calorie beer. It’s a session pale ale and at 3.8% ABV, one can has 95 calories in it.
The company has had one fundraising event since it opened its doors in 2021. It raised £110k earlier this year.
09.
The Spirit Beer Company
Location: Sheffield
Number of employees: <5
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £110k
The Spirit Beer Company produces a range of beers that taste like spirits and liqueurs, from apple schnapps to almond liqueur and ouzo.
The company was incorporated in 2017, and has raised a total of £3.25m. Most recently, it raised £110k on 1 January 2024.
08.
VAUX Brewery
Location: Sunderland
Number of employees: 5-9
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £115k
VAUX Brewery is a relaunched version of the original C. Vaux & Sons Brewery in Sunderland. As well as selling beers and merchandise, the brewery has also opened a taproom that is open on weekends and match days.
Relaunched in 2019, the brewery since then has been through one funding round and secured £115k through Seedrs and other investors. The fundraising happened earlier this year, in February.
07.
Forest Road Brewing Company
Location: London
Number of employees: 25-49
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £214k
Forest Road Brewing Company is a brewery founded by a group of flat mates who lived on Forest Road. The brewery produces a range of beers as well as having a taproom also in Hackney.
Since its establishment in 2014, the company has gone through a huge 15 funding rounds. The most recent was in June 2024 where it raised £214k.
06.
Abyss Brewing
Location: Lewes
Number of employees: 5-9
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £266k
Abyss is a microbrewery established out of the cellar of a local Lewes pub, The Pelham Arms. It was founded in 2016 and since then has opened a new venue: the Abyss Brewery + Tap also located in Lewes.
At the beginning of this year, in February, the brewery secured £266k in funding. It’s the company’s second fundraising event, the other was in 2022 for £50k.
05.
Signal Brewery
Location: Croydon
Number of employees: 10-24
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £318k
Signal Brewery was founded in 2016. It produces its own beers and runs a Croydon-based taproom. It also produces a craft gin in partnership with Bare Distillery in East Sussex.
In May this year, the company received £318k in its third funding round. This comes after raising £540k in February 2023 and £1.81m in 2020 — bringing its total equity raised to £2.67m.
04.
Wolfpack Lager
Location: London
Number of employees: 25-49
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £503k
Wolfpack Lager produces a range of beers and runs three pubs across London — one in Fulham, one in West Hampstead and one in Queens Park.
The company has gone through four funding rounds, raising a total of £1.85m. Its most recent fundraising was in April this year. It was also the only brewery to hit one of our ESG signals, attaining a Social & Governance Signal for having an age diversity in its directors.
03.
Hofmeister
Location: Surrey
Number of employees: 10-24
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £1.4m
Hofmeister produces Bavarian beers. The founders bought Hofmeister from Heineken and brought the beer company to England from Germany.
Through ten fundraising events, the company has raised a total of £8.19m. This year, in January, the brewery raised £1.4m. This comes just shortly after a fundraising event in 2023 where the company raised £2.61m.
02.
Wiper and True
Location: Bristol
Number of employees: 25-49
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £1.8m
Wiper and True originally started out as a home brewing team who made nomadic beers (beers that are only ever brewed once). Now they produce a range of staple beers as well as a non-alcoholic option.
The brewery raised £1.8m in its most recent funding round. Overall, it has raised a total of £7.49m over 12 years.
01.
Braybrooke Beer Company
Location: Northamptonshire
Number of employees: 10-24
Amount raised in its latest fundraising: £3.7m
Braybrooke Beer Company was founded by three friends, inspired by their love of German beers. They opened the brewery in 2017 located on Braybrooke Farm. As well as selling a range of beers, they also offer a lager club, where members can pay a subscription fee to get a selection of beers delivered to their door every month.
The company has only gone through one funding round, raising £3.7m in March this year.
Where can I find emerging UK brewers?
How did we make this list? Find out next week in our article: How we made our up-and-coming brewers list.
In the meantime, book a demo with one of our experts to get a look at how the platform works and see how we create our top ten lists and more.
