Guide

What is a farm brewery?

Updated October 7, 2026

A farm brewery is a brewery that sits on a working farm and is supposed to act like one. The beer is made on the land, at least some of the ingredients come off that land, and the public is invited to see it. That is the short answer. The longer answer depends on your state, because in the United States the phrase is a license category with legal teeth, not just a nice word on a sign. Checked in 2026, here is how it works in Maryland, where I learned it.

Farm brewery vs. taproom, brewpub and production brewery

These words get mixed up constantly, so here is how I use them. Treat it as working shorthand, not law.

Taproom brewery: a brewery with a room attached where you drink what it makes. The location can be an industrial park. The beer's ingredients come from wherever the supplier ships them from.
Brewpub: a restaurant that brews. The kitchen is the main business and the beer is part of the menu. Maryland treats this as its own license class, the Class 6 pub-brewery.
Production brewery: a brewery built to package beer and sell it through distributors. Maryland's Class 5 brewery and Class 7 micro-brewery licenses are separate from the farm license too.
Farm brewery: a brewery tied to agricultural land. The farm is the point, and in Maryland the law says so.

The practical difference is the farm. A taproom can exist without a field. A farm brewery cannot, at least not on paper.

Maryland's Class 8 farm brewery license

Maryland calls it the Class 8 farm brewery license. It lives in section 2-210 of the Alcoholic Beverages and Cannabis Article, as amended by Chapter 861 of the 2026 Laws of Maryland (Senate Bill 807). The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cannabis Commission issues the license, and its Executive Director has, in the statute's words, "exclusive regulatory authority over the operation of a Class 8 farm brewery." The statute sets the annual fee by the Executive Director and says it "may not exceed $200." The Commission's fiscal note counted 37 Class 8 licenses issued in the state.

The land requirement

Before July 1, 2026, the rules mostly talked about ingredients. The 2026 law added a farm test. Section 2-210(b)(3) now says: "The licensed farm shall be: (i) an agribusiness engaged in the production, showcasing, preparation, and sale of farm products; and (ii) actively engaged in agritourism by exposing the public to farming and value-added farming practices." The brewery also "may be located only at the place stated on the license." No farm, no license.

The local-ingredient requirement

This is the part people get wrong. Beer sold to a wholesaler or to a buyer in another state "shall be manufactured with an ingredient from a Maryland agricultural product, including hops, grain, and fruit, produced on the licensed farm." Read it carefully. It requires an ingredient, singular, grown on the licensed farm. It does not say all, or most. By its wording, that rule attaches only to beer sold to a wholesaler or out of state, and one farm-grown ingredient satisfies it, so a brewery could grow only fruit and buy malt elsewhere. Check with the Commission before relying on that reading. The statute also lets the license holder contract with a Class 2, Class 5 or Class 7 licensee "to brew and bottle beer from ingredients produced on the licensed farm," so the farm does not even have to host every brew day.

What it allows for on-site sales

Selling beer "for on-premises and off-premises consumption." Since July 1, 2026 that includes beer from "another manufacturer in the State," not just the license holder's own.
Samples "in an amount not exceeding 6 fluid ounces per brand," free or for a fee.
Retail sales each day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.
Production of "not more than 15,000 barrels of beer each calendar year."
Food, through a licensed food establishment, a licensed food truck, a licensed caterer, or cottage industry food prepared on the farm. The 2026 law dropped the old fixed menu of allowed foods and repealed the rule tying food sales to a Class D beer and wine licensee's receipts ratio.
Festivals, live music or other entertainment, and renting parts of the farm for weddings, banquets, birthday parties and fundraisers.

The same law exempts holders whose Class 8 license was first issued on or before July 1, 2015 from the zoning-conformity rule in section 1-405(b). Newer holders still have to conform. If you are thinking about applying, read the statute itself and talk to the Commission. I am a brewer, not a lawyer, and the text changed this summer.

What other states call it

Most states with the category use the same name. New York's farm brewery license is the best-known comparison because it is stricter on ingredients. Under a 2014 State Liquor Authority advisory, beer from a New York farm brewery had to be made with at least 20% New York-grown hops and other ingredients (by weight, water excluded) through 2018, 60% for 2019 through 2023, and 90% from January 1, 2024. Check the current law before relying on this. Maryland asks for one farm-grown ingredient. New York asks for nearly everything to be local. Same name, very different bar.

Maryland farm breweries on the Class 8 list

Each of these appears on the Commission's Class 8 archive as Issued, with a close date of April 30, 2026. I checked each brewery's own site or an official listing in October 2026; only Waredaca (2026 site with hours) and Big Truck (a July 2025 event) and Hopkins (an April 2025 university profile) have dated evidence, so check hours before driving.

Waredaca Brewing Company, Laytonsville. Montgomery County's first farm brewery, opened in 2015 on a 220-acre horse farm. Its own site carries a 2026 copyright.
Stone Silo Brewery, Damascus. A 70-acre farm with a stone silo from about 1931. The brewery opened in 2023, and its site carries a 2026 copyright.
Big Truck Farm Brewery, Parkton and Queenstown. Grows barley and hops (Cascade, Mosaic and Centennial). The Parkton taproom ran a July 5, 2025 event.
Farmacy Brewing, Reisterstown. A converted horse stable on Willowdale Farm, a working farm since 1961, with a 7-barrel brewhouse.
Beer Farm at Brookeville, Brookeville. Hops, shiitake mushrooms, raspberries and blackberries grow on the land, and spent grain goes back into the soil as compost.
Manor Hill Brewing, Ellicott City. A 54-acre working farm. It calls itself Maryland's largest farm brewery, which is its own claim and not something I checked.
Hopkins Farm Brewery, Havre de Grace. A family farm with a century of dairy and crop history that grows barley and is experimenting with hops, in a taproom built with reclaimed barn materials.

For the wider picture, see our guide to Maryland breweries.

How Jubilee worked as a farm brewery

Jubilee Farm Fermentations was a small farm brewery at 19860 Pear Hill Rd in Leonardtown, in St. Mary's County. It described itself as making "small batch craft beer with a focus on sustainable, sessionable and fresh local ales," and as "experimental yet approachable farm beer brewed on a small scale with rustic techniques." That pairing of small scale and "sessionable" is the reason we wrote a separate piece on sessionable beer.

Its first season, the Premiere 2022 Summer Season, ran Saturdays from July 2 to August 20, 2022, 3 to 8 p.m. It poured beer and young wine by the glass in a courtyard in the vines, and dogs and kids were welcome. The beers included Moonlite, a dark beer with a short-aged bourbon barrel version, plus Miami Sunrise, a fresh, fruity one. Beer also sold at the Home Grown Farm Market and the Greenbelt Farmers Market, and in October 2024 Jubilee was a vendor at Historic St. Mary's City events.

That is a farm brewery in practice. The Premiere 2022 season poured beer and young wine by the glass in a courtyard in the vines, on Saturday afternoons. In early 2026 the brewery moved to Historic St. Mary's City and was renamed The Farthings Fermenter. The full story is on the about page.