Consolidating Craft's Consolidation: Half Acre, Maplewood, Left Hand, Bootstrap, Figueroa Mountain, Drake's

The biggest craft beer trend of 2025, in addition to straight up closures, was the whirlwind of consolidation designed to eliminate redundancies between two or more breweries. My hometown of Chicago managed to mostly avoid these headlines, but early 2026 has been a different story. Thus far this year, closures have included Alarmist Brewing, Whiner Beer Co., Illuminated Brew Works, and Casa Humilde.

This week, two of Illinois’ strongest names in the business — Half Acre Beer Co. and Maplewood Brewery & Distillery — announced that they’re forming a single company. The teaming of two successful, profitable businesses has the opportunity to reshape the competitive landscape in Chicago and may ultimately serve as a model for how strong regional brands navigate a slower-growth era.

While the details of this one have a few twists that make it unique, the underlying motivation should feel familiar. Over the past few weeks, a number of breweries around the country have continued experimenting with new partnership structures designed to better utilize production capacity, share resources, and improve long-term prospects.

Before digging deeper into the Half Acre and Maplewood announcement, it’s worth looking at two similar moves that surfaced earlier this year. While they received less attention nationally, they help illustrate the different ways breweries are trying to solve the same underlying problem.