Domestic U.S. Beer Shipments Fall 4.3% in September; Imports Drop 13.8%

Domestic U.S. beer shipments slipped again in September. U.S. brewers shipped an estimated 11.5 million barrels of beer in September 2026, down 4.3% from 12,013,332 barrels in September 2025. The figure comes from the Beer Institute’s unofficial taxable removals estimate, released Nov. 4. That’s about 513,000 fewer barrels than a year earlier.

Imports fell faster. Imported beer volume dropped 13.8% in September, and total industry supply fell 6.2%, according to Beverage Business News. BevNews cites Beer Institute economist Andrew Heritage for both figures. Brewbound also reported the 6.2% drop.

What “taxable removals” measures

Taxable removals are beer that domestic brewers moved out of bond and paid federal excise tax on, measured in 31-gallon barrels. The Beer Institute builds its table from TTB tax-paid data. It’s a shipment number, not a sales number. It shows how much American-brewed beer left breweries in a month, not how much people bought or drank at bars and stores in that same month.

The September number is an unofficial estimate, so it can differ from TTB’s official figures when they come out. July and August 2026 are also shown as rounded estimates (12.0 million and 10.9 million barrels).

January through September: all nine months down

Through the first nine months of 2026, domestic taxable removals total 102,961,227 barrels, down 5.0% from 108,326,294 at the same point in 2025. That’s about 5.4 million fewer barrels. Each month from January through September came in below the same month of 2025. The declines range from 0.5% in March to 15.2% in January, and September’s 4.3% drop is steeper than July (2.8%) or August (3.5%).

Imports: Mexico down, Ireland and Germany up

Per BevNews, September imports from Mexico fell 14.4% from a year earlier, and Mexican imports are down 1.5% year to date. In September, imports from Ireland grew 8.6% and those from Germany rose 18.5%.

Neither the Beer Institute release nor BevNews’s summary gives a reason for the September decline.

What’s next

The Beer Institute plans to release its October 2026 estimate on Dec. 8, 2026.

Sources: Beer Institute via GlobeNewswire (Nov. 4, 2026); Beverage Business News (Nov. 5, 2026); Brewbound (Nov. 5, 2026).

Featured image: A canning line at THAT Brewery in Cottonwood, Ariz., photographed in 2017 by Alan Levine via Wikimedia Commons, released under CC0. Illustrative only. Cropped, color-graded and overlaid by BeerAlien.