We are definitely seeing the pruning of the microbreweries here in the Seattle area. For many of them, their best hope is to be bought out by someone bigger before they go belly up. Tons and tons of them were started in a garage by a homebrewer with a passion, but successfully scaling it up and running it like a business eludes a lot of them. The stereotypical microbrewery here was started up by a Boeing engineer or a Microsoft/Google/Amazon coder. There are only so many hazy IPAs that a given market will support.
Between a full-time job, outdoor recreation when the weather is good, and keeping up the house, I don't have time to spend my weekends making repeat tours of the local brewpubs and microbreweries. What I can do is go to the local brewfests, makes notes of what I like, and then look for that brew at a local store or someplace close that I can fill up a growler. I am sure that I am missing out on a lot of new brews, but I on average drink less than two beers a week, and I have to pick and choose in consideration of the time that I have to spend on it.
