Has nation’s craft beer fad fizzled?

Has craft beer peaked? In one sign that the industry has grown less frothy, more craft breweries closed in 2017 than any time in the past decade. And while the craft beer makers saw more growth than last year, their pace is slowing.

A new report by the Brewers Association — a trade association representing small and independent American craft brewers — showed that craft brewers saw a 5 percent rise in production volume in 2017. Yet with that growth comes an increasingly crowded playing field, leading to more closures of small craft breweries. In 2017, there were nearly 1,000 new brewery openings nationwide and 165 closures — a closing rate of 2.6 percent. That’s a 42 percent jump from 2016, when 116 craft breweries closed.

Experts say saturation is still some time away, and that pullback is inevitable for any booming industry that, with time, begins to mature.

“We have seen a little bit of deceleration,” said Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association. “When you’re talking about an industry that sells tens of billions of dollars a year, it’s hard to grow at double-digit rates.”

Growth in the craft brewing industry began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Watson said, and has seen a resurgence in the past decade.

Matt Simpson, owner of the craft beer consultancy The Beer Sommelier, said that the slowdown is natural after “an initial explosion.”

“The majority of brewers entering the marketplace are making good beer,” Simpson said, “but a few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.”

With more than 6,300 breweries operating in the United States in 2017, small and independent brewers represented nearly 13 percent of the market share by volume of the overall beer industry.

Still, Watson and Simpson agreed that it will take some time for the industry to reach full saturation. And albeit at a slower pace, craft breweries are still growing.