Craft brewer saturation?

A recent article at Time on-line suggests that we may be reaching in America a point of craft-beer saturation.  Are Time's concerns premature?  

Here in San Diego County in California, we sure seem to have a bad case of irrational exuberance when it comes to opening new craft breweries.  That trend seems to have been further encouraged by a fast-growing industry involving brewery tours patronized by customers who don’t seem to know a whole lot about beer, but who are always looking for a new way to kill a weekend afternoon that'll make them seem cooler and hipper at work come Monday morning (i.e., not just wandering the mega-mall with all the other Zekes).

Based on that evidence alone I’d say, yes, we may already have surpassed market saturation.  In my book, the only worthwhile market entry in San Diego County over the past year has been BNS in Santee, California.  And half BNS’s attention will be paid to distilled spirits!

However, consider that the last “peak” in numbers of American breweries appears to have been the year 1870, when 3,286 breweries produced an average of 2,009 barrels (which are amazingly accurate numbers for a time of such generally poor record-keeping!).  See Stack, Martin. "A Concise History of America's Brewing Industry". EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. July 4, 2003. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/stack.brewing.industry.history.us (citing data from the United States Brewers Association, 1979 Brewers Almanac, Washington DC: 12-13).

By 1980, the number of American breweries had shrunk to a mere 101.  Although per capita beer consumption had grown over the century from just 5.3 gallons annually in 1870, to a whopping  23.1 gallons annually in 1980!

Granted, in 1870 there was no Anheuser-Busch, Miller-Coors, or Pabst Brewing – at least not on their current scale.  And those mega-brewers still dominate the brewing market in America.

Still, if we start with the 1870 numbers, and scale up for per capita consumption increases, and also scale up for population increases, we see that America in 2013 could conceivably support as many as 114,650 breweries.  That’s a far cry from the current national stock of 2,500 craft breweries reported by Time.