By the Numbers

How much Albany made

Every reliable figure for the city's beer output, in barrels. Each mark shows how good the number is. A solid dot means a period source states the number. A hollow dot is an estimate worked out from census dollars or taxes, with its likely range as an error bar. A star is a claim printed at the time that conflicts with better evidence. Where a source splits the total, a bar shows ale (gold) and lager (blue). Hover or tap any mark for its source, period and confidence.

Year bases differ. Census years end on 1 June (1840–1870) or 31 May (1880, 1890). Howell's 1883 and 1884 figures are for years ending 30 April. Federal tax years end on 30 June. The 1840 and 1860 points cover Albany County; the rest cover the city. Solid¹

The early figures agree better than you might expect. A survey reprinted by Howell found 4 breweries making 8,500 barrels around 1820. Solid¹ The New-York Farmer counted 38,000 barrels from 7 breweries in 1831, close to the later estimate of 42,000 for 1829. Solid²³ The 1840 census then gives Albany County 8 breweries and 2,007,500 gallons, about 64,758 barrels. Solid⁴ In 1849 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine put the city's annual product at 80,000 barrels, a figure the magazine itself called an estimate. Solid⁵

The per-resident view divides output by Albany's population, interpolated between censuses. Solid⁸ In 1884 the city brewed about 3.9 barrels for every man, woman and child, roughly 120 gallons each. That was far more than Albany could drink: most of it was shipped out. Inference The 1840 and 1860 points are county output divided by city population, so they run a little high.

After Repeal, Beverwyck (later Schaefer), Dobler and Hedrick brewed again, but no annual output figure for any of them has been found. Solid⁹ The chart shows that stretch as hatched, with Beverwyck's rated capacity as a dashed line: 250,000 barrels in 1938, 300,000 in 1939 and 600,000 in 1950, when the plant was sold to Schaefer because its sales had not covered its costs. Single source¹⁰¹¹ Capacity is what a plant could make, not what it sold.

What the census counted

The census never gave Albany's barrels before 1900, but from 1840 it counted breweries, workers, capital and the value of what they made. These four panels cover 1840 and 1855–1909. Filled bars are the city; outlined bars are Albany County. Dollars are nominal, and 1870's are inflated greenbacks. Solid¹²

Read together, the panels tell a story of consolidation. The number of breweries fell from 17 in 1880 to 8 in 1909, while capital more than doubled to $4.2 million and product value rose to $3.05 million. Solid¹³¹⁴ Fewer, bigger, more mechanized plants made about the same amount of beer with fewer hands. Inference

Albany in context

In 1840 Albany County made about a third of New York State's beer: 64,758 barrels out of about 195,000, and about 8.6% of all the beer counted in the United States. Solid⁴⁷ By 1884 Albany's output was five times larger, yet only 1.9% of the nation's and 5.7% of New York's, because the rest of the country, and lager, grew far faster. Solid¹⁵ By 1916 it was 0.57%. Solid¹⁶

Albany was still a top-tier brewing city in the early 1880s. In the tax year to June 1878, all of Wisconsin, Milwaukee included, made 500,983 barrels: only about 40% more than Albany alone made in 1884. Solid¹⁵ In the 1855 state census, Albany's 8 breweries reported two-thirds of the product value of Manhattan's 19 and six times Brooklyn's 12, though that census clearly missed many small German lager houses downstate. Solid⁷

How many breweries

The number of breweries operating in the city. Hollow dots are counts from city directories, which list firms and sometimes miss small lager houses. Diamonds are census counts, labelled city or county. Approximate¹⁸ The 1862 directory lists 19 "Brewers," but three made root or spruce beer, so the real count is 16. Approximate¹⁹ By 1900 the count had fallen to about 10. In October 2026 there are 4 confirmed breweries in the city, and 2 more where brewing on site is uncertain. Approximate²⁰

Capacity vs. output

A brewery's capacity is how much its plant could make; its output or sales is what it actually made. Popular histories often mix them up. Taylor's famous "200,000 barrels" is the capacity of the 1851 plant; by 1901 the company rated it at about 100,000. Solid²¹²² The "80,000 barrels of ale and 160,000 bushels of malt" of the 1880s belong to Amsdell Brothers, not Taylor. Solid¹ Dobler claimed 75,000 barrels of output and 150,000 of capacity around 1902, far above the 25,000 often quoted. Single source Each row below is one brewery: filled circles are output or sales, hollow diamonds are capacity, and the small numbers are years.

Every figure

All the numbers collected for this site, with their period, what they measure and where they come from. It includes figures the charts leave out, and some duplicates where two sources disagree.