This is interesting from NPR today - beer is not only recession proof but perhaps recession busting:

...mounting evidence suggests that beer in particular, and the beer industry that surrounds it, may be as good for growth as excess sobriety. In some of the world's toughest investment climates, beer companies today are building factories, creating jobs, and providing vital public services, all in the pursuit of new customers for a pint. It's the brewery as economic stimulus: a formula even a frat boy could love. In a time of unprecedented global prosperity, there are an ever-growing number of beer guzzlers worldwide. Liesbeth Colen and Johan Swinnen of the University of Leuven report that beer consumption in China in 1980 was minimal. By 2005, however, the country consumed more than 40 billion liters per year. In 1961, Brazilians drank 630 million liters of beer; in 2007 that number was 7.5 billion liters.

I recall seeing somewhere that brewing constituted a massive percentage of the British economy in the 1700s so I suppose it is reasonable that in certain contexts, adding a modern brewery is introducing a whole new level of industrial technology. It's not all happy happy joy joy as "people living on a dollar a day or less can spend 6 cents or more of that on alcohol and tobacco" which sort of reminds us we are not talking about the craft beer revolution here. Not a lot of pairing. But, just the same, jobs are jobs and ones that leverage an increase in local agricultural production mean the breweries are causing greater economic benefit than in the one business's four walls.