Nine years ago, there were over 100,000 barrels brewed in Frederick, Maryland. Where did they go? The short answer is New York, or to hard seltzer and canned cocktails. But that’s not an honest accounting. Let me explain.
Nine years ago, the biggest brewer in Frederick, and in Maryland, was Flying Dog. Flying Dog was acquired by upstate New York’s FX Matt in 2023. You might know them from their Saranac brand, or Utica Club. The next time you see a bottle of Flying Dog, take a peak at the small writing on the bottle and you’ll see “brewed by Flying Dog Brewery, Utica, NY” next to the style of the beer.
Let’s look at 2017 as it was recounted by the Brewers Association and their publication, The New Brewer, which publishes annual totals of barrels produced by breweries. In 2017, Flying Dog produced over 107,000 barrels. By 2021, those numbers were down to 81,231 barrels.
But considering 100,000 barrels once brewed in Maryland are no longer brewed in Maryland, it makes one wonder, where did all that beer go if Flying Dog now makes zero beer in Frederick? I would be shocked if FX Matt was making even 81,000 barrels of Flying Dog today. We asked FX Matt, but have not heard back.
It would be nearly impossible to say definitively that of the 100,000 barrels brewed in Frederick 10 years ago, all those kegs and cans and bottles were taken by AB InBev, MolsonCoors, or Heineken. Or that AB took 33,000 barrels, MolsonCoors took 33,000 and Heineken took 33,000 and three small independent brewers like Frederick’s Attaboy, RAK, and Steinhardt brewed 1,000 barrels combined. But perhaps of note is that New Brewer reported Attaboy brewing 600 barrels in 2021, Steinhardt was listed as brewing 340, and RAK hadn’t opened in 2021. Of course people are drinking less now and they may continue to drink less, shrinking the market over the next decade.
Consider 2023, the year Flying Dog was acquired by FX Matt. That year, Boston Beer’s sales to retailers took a dive, decreasing 6%. Yet, the company’s depletions were still more than two times the company’s 2017 volumes. 2023 saw Boston Beer shipping 7.678 million barrels, a -6.2% decline compared to 2022 when the company shipped 8.183 million barrels. And while Boston Beer has had Truly out since 2016, it wasn’t until 2019 when local DC Brau began releasing its Full Transparency line of hard seltzer. As we reported in 2019, over the July 4th Holiday, White Claw and Truly did the case equivalent to 102,000 barrels of beer.
Brau CEO Brandon Skall told us “it’s not that simple to draw a straight line from 2017 FD [Flying Dog] numbers to current macro seltzer volume, especially since the market fundamentally changed.” He went on to write, “seltzer has been a challenge the past few years. I see spirits-based replacement as the main factor. For example High Noon is technically an ready to drink (RTD) canned cocktail but the consumer thinks of it competitively with seltzers.” He stated that when High Noon saw explosive growth, Brau’s Full Transparency seltzer line began to decline. “Now that category has expanded to include brands like Surfside. I think the same is likely true for the larger seltzer brands, but I won’t speak for them. We cut back the FT flavors to a manageable amount led by Orange Crush, which proved to be the clear winner for us.”
Getting focused on Frederick, we asked Attaboy co-owner, Carly Fuller Ogden, what it’s like making beer in Frederick today. She wrote:
The beer industry has certainly changed in the last ten years with many regional sized breweries closing not just here but all over the US. Consumer trends have changed even from when we opened, and for us, we just have to get up everyday and try to make the best beer we can, creating a community that we’d like to be a part of. We’re pretty lucky, we enjoy the work. Nerding out on flavors and process still excites Brian [Ogden, co-owner]. I get to take some of my silly ideas and bring them to life. We have a great staff. We have a good life in Frederick, but we still have to get up everyday and do the work. You have to sell a lot of $5 beer to make it in this industry!
It is as much wild speculation as it is impossible to prove that ABI/MolsonCoors/Heineken is eating everyone’s lunch. Still, there are facts that are undeniable. ABI sales are up.
For further analysis, we turn to our indefatiguable beer industry covering colleague, Dave Infante, author of Fingers amongst other various outlets for the details. In a Vinepair piece he writes, “It appears all but certain that ABI regained the overall lead of the corporate-craft pack in 2026.”
The “corporate-craft pack” would include among others, New Belgium Brewing (NBB), owned by Kirin. In that regard Ryan Van Fleet, NBB’s senior director of business insights and analytics, provided context to Infante, “Removing FMBs and other non-beer stuff from the equation entirely, NBB’s total is 1,672,120 barrels — 1,263,593 for New Belgium and 408,527 for Bell’s.” Van Fleet breaks out Bell’s, another Kirin-owned brewery, from the overall NBB numbers. It’s looking like Bell’s brewed four times as much as Flying Dog in 2017 when they were making 100,000 barrels, and NBB brewed 12 times as much.
The rise of brewing in Frederick was part of a national trend of great growth for tiny, small, and mid-size brewers. Those numbers of double-digit growth from say 2008 to 2018 may never come again. But that doesn’t mean the big multinational brewers aren’t looking to claw back some of the barrels brewed by smaller, independent brewers. Smaller brewers are wise to adapt to the sales strategy of a kaleidoscopic market.
So, did those 100,000 barrels of 2017 go to the macros? Some did, some didn’t. The Brewers Association of Maryland’s latest data has just under 7,500 barrels brewed in Frederick County in 2025. That’s less than 10% of what Flying Dog was brewing by themselves when they left the state.
Maryland not only lost 100,000 barrels of Flying Dog, they lost DuClaw, and much of Guinness’ Baltimore Blonde production. In The New Brewer, DuClaw was listed in 2020 as brewing 18,250 barrels. That is a sizable amount for the majority of 9,578 craft brewers today, who annually make significantly less than that.
We find it remarkable that with roughly 80,000 people, Frederick has a dozen or so breweries in town and adjacent. Let’s say there’s only 10 breweries in Frederick, that’s still one brewery per 8,000 people. And for that I am grateful.
Not too far from Frederick is Sapwood Cellars which according to Untappd is the bestest, most gold medal winning brewery in Maryland. We heard from Sapwood co-owner Michael Tonsmeire who chimed in on seltzer and RTD writing:
Our seltzer is now legally a kegged cocktail (vodka, water, and juice) and something like <1% of the volume of our beer production. That’s been pretty steady since it is draft only and not a focus in terms of production volume – now that we have wine and margaritas if anything sales have gone down as a percentage of total alcohol sold.
A recent trip to Sapwood bears this out. While “anecdata” on a sunny day on their patio, about as many guests enjoyed margaritas and glasses of wine as were drinking beer. But ultimately, we’re grateful to be in a spot in 2026 where we have a diversity of beer styles, served alongside quality wines, and well-made margaritas.
Speaking of gratitude, go see your local. If you’re in the Fredericksburg area, go see Attaboy. They’re making great beer and I know when you spend locally, those dollars stay in the community.
