It’s a common refrain in beer writing that there’s “never been a better time to drink beer”. But if 2022 is anything to go by, we may have to stop using it.

Last year was the first in more than a decade that more breweries closed than opened. At last count, at least 80 rolled down their shutters for the final time and no size or genre of brewery was safe. Countless small hobbyist cask breweries have gone, alongside much-loved regionals like Cornwall’s Skinner’s. Experimental microbreweries like Boutilliers fared no better than Belgian enthusiasts like Solvay Society. Historic brands such as Jennings and Caledonian finally disappeared from the bar, and so did one of the UK’s most influential modern breweries – Wild Beer Co.

Craft breweries have always teetered on the edge of disaster and have been constantly scrambling to avoid it with talk about the importance of independence and ethics. Brewing exceptional beer is simply not enough to make it in an industry so heavily controlled by the government and a handful of international conglomerates. A tightly controlled market, the fifth highest duty in Europe, race-to-the-bottom pricing of cask and the endlessly rising rents in urban areas have made being a small brewer in the UK a dangerous career path for decades.

Many decided to walk it anyway, spurred on by Small Brewers Relief, the American brewing renaissance and a renewed interest in local produce among food and drink lovers. More than 2,000 breweries have opened since the turn of the century, and beer geeks have always dismissed talk of the craft beer revolution being a bubble. Such positivity is hard in this post-Covid, post-Brexit, war-torn period of history we live in, however. It seems that everything that can work against small brewers’ interest is now working very hard indeed.

The brewing world’s new issues are more acute, more steep than those that predated them. I’ve heard of malt prices tripling, energy quadrupling, CO2 costs quintupling. A terrible hop harvest in Europe has led to supply shortages and price rises for vital classic varieties. The cost of glass bottles and cans keeps increasing at an alarming rate, and even the cardboard they’re carried in isn’t immune.

You know things are bad when breweries are closing just weeks before Christmas, easily the busiest time of the year for the beer trade. What will happen as the cost of living crisis deepens during the quietest two months of the year is anyone’s guess, but mine is that we haven’t seen the peak of closures yet. Hundreds of breweries will be looking at their accounts after Christmas, or in the run up to year end in April, and making perhaps the most difficult decision of their lives. That’s just the visible effect too. Among those who soldier on, there’s no counting the loss of business plans torn up, expansions cancelled and profits written off by debt interest.

The only good news is that as consumers we’ve never been more powerful. It would be very easy for me to simply say go out to the pub and support independent breweries, but you’ve likely been doing that most of your drinking life. We need to be more clever about it, because the same people, buying the same beers won’t be enough for most breweries, shops and pubs currently staring at their balance sheets. We don’t just need to buy good beer, we need to tell people about it.

We need to write to our MPs about the threats that breweries face; we need to write glowing Google and Untappd reviews for those who earn it; message our friends about tasty fresh beers going on tap at local pubs; use social media to spread the word about great new beers and brewers; sing the joys of pubs and bottleshops from the rooftops and espouse the benefits of drinking well-kept beer there, rather than some tired, ambient-stored tinnies from the supermarket.

In short we need to do exactly what beer was born to get us doing – talk. They say talk is cheap, but that’s the beauty of it. We’re all facing a cost of living crisis, but whether you’re drinking like the world’s ending, doing Dry January, or cutting back on your spending, you can still talk. The best time to be a beer drinker may be behind us, but the most important time to be one is just beginning.

Jonny Garrett @jonnygarrett is an author and co-presenter on The Craft Beer Channel, he is the current British Guild of Beer Writers Beer Writer of the Year.