For the third consecutive year, the Greater Knoxville brewery census has concluded without producing a number, with the final count certified as “between 24 and 38, inclusive.”
The Brewery Enumeration Committee cited familiar obstacles. Enumerators remain divided on whether to count companies or doors, a dispute crystallized by Smoky Mountain Brewery, which was recorded as one brewery, four breweries, or “a chain, which is cheating,” depending on the enumerator. Taprooms operated by Asheville, Atlanta, and Johnson City breweries were counted under protest.
Field conditions were also blamed. Two breweries opened during the count window. A third closed and reopened under a different name with the same beer, which the committee scored as a net zero, with an asterisk.
“We had a number on Tuesday,” said chief enumerator Roy Huskey, who leads the Sevierville leg. “By Thursday it was wrong in both directions.” Huskey’s Pigeon Forge team additionally counted one brewery three times, because it has three doors and a mountain coaster.
The industry’s own records offer little help. The area brewers association’s membership page currently lists twenty members. There are twenty-eight names on the list.
At the certified range, the metro has between one brewery per 24,000 residents and one per 37,000, a ratio the committee describes as “either sustainable or not.”
Naturalist Bev Scarboro, who has tracked the riverfront carp since before the World’s Fair, declined an invitation to consult, calling the brewery population “too volatile to model.”
The committee will reconvene next year. Two breweries have opened since the census ended.