Maine Breweries Incredibly Add $260 Million to Economy in 2020

Editor's note: This article was written by a Townsquare Media Northern New England contributor and may contain the individual's views, opinions or personal experiences.

Breaking News: Mainers Love Beer.

Okay, not exactly breaking news, but Maine's love of beer certainly helped keep a suddenly vulnerable industry rolling through the early onslaught of the pandemic.

According to the Bangor Daily News, the Maine Brewers Guild and the University of Maine School of Economics released their 2020 craft beer economic impact report. Even in a year of lockdowns and uncertainty, the breweries fared well.

According to the report, Maine's breweries, suppliers and employees contributed over $260 million in 2020. That is quite a number, considering the circumstances.

The pandemic shut tasting rooms and brew pubs down for months. Many breweries were selling curbside and hoping people were stocking up at the supermarket. They also had to rely on hitting numbers without the majority of tourists coming to the state.

With all that being said, the impact was still large, and according to the Bangor Daily News, the number of breweries actually increased during 2020 from 154 to 160.

This is another example of Mainers literally helping Mainers. 2020 changed everything in the customer service industry. With tourism essentially cut at the knees for nearly an entire year, many expected to see much more of a negative impact on the craft beer industry.

Instead of mass carnage, there were long lines at brewery doorsteps, beer and liquor stores were selling out, and beer was being delivered like pizza. It was quite a site to see.

I mean, Mainers drink a lot of beer. However, to see Mainers drink that beer, while supporting a very important Maine industry warms the heart.

Maine isn't hurting for beer options. And it looks like that won't be changing anytime soon.

Cheers, Maine.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.