The Vancouver brewery map of the last two years has moved more than the one before it, and the honest way to describe the pattern is that this province's craft brewing reached a peak of openings and then went through a shakeout. Industry reporting put the number of British Columbia craft breweries closing in 2025 at about 25, against a previous pace of three or four a year, and a handful of the casualties were in Metro Vancouver. Naming them precisely matters more than naming many of them, because a list of taprooms goes stale within months and a false name on a list outlives the article.
The Three Pressures Behind The 2025 Shakeout
- Central City Brewers, the Surrey brewery behind Red Racer, changed hands rather than shutting, entering creditor protection in November 2024 and being bought by the Mark Anthony Group in February 2025.
- Other Metro Vancouver closings from the 2025 wave include Studio Brewing in Burnaby and ABC in New Westminster, with Boardwalk in Port Coquitlam also reported closed.
- The clearest reason a brewery closes is the rent, because a 35 per cent increase at Vancouver Island Brewing's Government Street site ended production in Victoria in 2024.
- A single-room taproom is a hospitality business first, and a brewery that also sells into liquor stores and restaurants gains a second revenue stream that carries a margin cost.
The Businesses That Actually Changed Hands Or Shut
Four changes in the Vancouver area are documented well enough to state without hedging, and they cover three different kinds of ending. Central City Brewers and Distillers, the Surrey brewery behind Red Racer, entered creditor protection in November 2024 and was bought by the Mark Anthony Group, with the purchase completing in February 2025. That is an ownership change rather than a shutdown, and it is the clearest example in the province of a small brewery becoming part of a much larger operation. What the site is doing now is a separate question that public sources do not clearly answer, so it is better left open than filled in.
House of Funk, in North Vancouver's Shipyards, closed in September 2025 after a year in which it had changed its name in an attempt to stay afloat. Its former website now redirects to an unrelated coffee business, which is worth knowing because a redirect reads very much like a reopening if you do not know the history. Bridge Brewing is still operating, but it consolidated into three North Vancouver locations, and the downtown and Marine Drive rooms it once ran are gone. Stanley Park Brewing is still brewing, and its current location is out at the park itself, with the downtown Georgia Street room no longer appearing among its sites.
Two more Metro Vancouver closures from the 2025 wave are Studio Brewing in Burnaby and ABC in New Westminster, with Boardwalk in Port Coquitlam also reported closed. And a pub rather than a brewery is worth a mention because it gets miscounted: Mahony's renamed itself Mahony's Tavern in 2021, its Stamps Landing room closed around the middle of 2025, and there is no good evidence it ever brewed its own beer.
The Ones Still Pouring
The other side of the ledger matters just as much, because a story about decline that ignores the survivors is as misleading as one that invents taprooms. Steamworks Brewing is the largest operation in the city and has expanded to four sites, covering Gastown, Burnaby, Mount Pleasant and Horseshoe Bay. Parallel 49 is still trading in East Vancouver as an independent, and although an undated commercial buyout listing circulates for the business, there is no confirmed sale. Storm Brewing, Bomber Brewing, Luppolo Brewing, 33 Acres, R&B Brewing and Brewhall are all operating, and Luppolo moved from Alexander Street to Venables Street in Strathcona. Terminal City is still on Clark Drive.
Two names that turn up in older Vancouver lists deserve clearing out. Dageraad Brewing in Burnaby makes beers in trappist styles, and the distinction matters: no Canadian brewery, Dageraad included, is a member of the International Trappist Association, and only genuine abbey-affiliated breweries qualify. Several Vancouver names that circulate on aggregator sites, including Bandy Brewing, Coalition Brewing, Cambie Brewing and Green College Beer, returned nothing when checked and are not real Vancouver businesses. A Red Cap Brewery is sometimes listed for the city in the 1990s, and no evidence for one has ever been found.
Why The Churn Looked The Way It Did
The mechanics behind the 2025 wave are ordinary and worth understanding, because they explain why some names survive and others do not. A taproom is a hospitality business first. It carries rent, staffing and food costs against a product that cannot be price-hoped the way a coffee can, and when a lease comes up for renewal the number on the renewal notice decides the outcome. Vancouver Island Brewing gave the province the clearest example of this in 2024, when a rent increase of roughly 35 per cent at its Government Street site in Victoria ended the brewery there, with the taproom closing in September and production ceasing in November. Nothing about its beer was the problem.
The second pressure is distribution. A brewery with one room has one revenue stream, and it rises and falls with the weather and with the neighbourhood. A brewery that also sells into liquor stores and restaurants has a second stream, but it has to survive the margin between taproom pricing and wholesale, and it has to build a brand that travels before it can take that step. Breweries that tried to skip the first stage and go straight to retail have generally had a harder time than the ones that spent years building a room first, which is one reason the long-running operations in the city are the long-running ones. The third pressure is simply that the openings had gone too fast, and a cohort that starts in the same year tends to end in the same year.
None of this is a verdict on the beer. Several of the breweries that closed were making genuinely interesting work, and a brewery that shuts is a business outcome rather than a judgement on its malt. What the churn does change is the habit of trusting a list, which is why the BC Ale Trail brewery directory is more useful than any article's list, and why checking a brewery's own site before driving to it is the sensible default.
