The short answer is that the oldest breweries in the country at the time Prohibition began weren't big enough to survive after extensive competition with emerging national conglomerates. Yeungling was among the only East Coast breweries to do so, with most of the rest of the Prohibition survivors being the giants of the industry: Pabst, Schlitz, Anhueser-Busch, Miller, and Blatz being the most notable. Those giants spent Prohibition buying up as much competitive advantage as they could, and reentered the market with force, strangling small breweries even faster than they had prior to Volstead Act.

Yeungling wasn't the first brewery established in the United States. It was the oldest brewery to survive Prohibition and rampant competition with the emerging Beer Barons (I wonder, if marijuana becomes legal, if the era of the eighteenth amendment will still be referenced as capital-P Prohibition).

The first driver for the mass extinction of breweries was actually the railroad (1). As the railroads expanded, shipping became relatively cheap, and despite more and more beer being consumed by American workers, the rising giants of the industry were able to steeply undercut the relatively small, local operations. Peaking just shy of 3,000 breweries (producing around 6.6 million barrels annually) in the country in 1870, just over 1,200 (producing north of 60 million barrels annually) would enter the Prohibition era to fight for their lives. Cheap beer from the Beer Barons was being distributed around the country, and the city of Milwaukee was becoming known for its beer and whiskey production.

Prohibition was an odd beast, not least because, like any massive legal movement in the United States, compromises had to be made to the vast regional conglomeration. It stemmed from a broad-party basis; which is to say some very, very diverse groups supported it. Women's rights movements were tied in heavily to the Temperance movement; Susan B Anthony is probably one of the most-known advocates today of Prohibition (2). Xenophobes and racists also supported prohibition; like the attempts of white supremacists in the '60s to ban guns, they were aimed at black people and immigrants with the assumptions that loopholes could be crafted to allow whites continued access (3). Anti-corruption advocates joined the parade as well, as banning the saloons where many corrupt politicians and political machines would have their infamous back-room meetings as well as solicit pay-for-vote schemes (3). Various Protestant religious factions, such as the Methodists, who refused to drink for religious reasons also formed a backbone of the movement.

However.

Few of these people actually wanted to full ban alcohol (3). Some of the Protestants wanted a full ban, but many used wine in communal services, as an example. Further, there was, as in any issue, significant opposition, such as those lawmakers who lived in parts of the country famous for alcohol production; the Beer Barons of Milwaukee, the fledgling vineyards of California, and the whiskey-distillers in the Deep South (1). So, what kind of compromises were made?

Well, there's a few that are commonly known. The consumption of alcohol wasn't banned; simply its sale. Vineyards in California (and other parts of the country) actually exploded as soon as the implications were clear. They would sell dried grapes in bricks, with specific things to avoid doing to your brick of dried grapes, as it would result in wine. Bathtub gin and moonshine took off. Pharmacists were still allowed to sell whiskey, which had been stored in great barrels in storehouses, and organized crime started hiring druggists left, right, and center to treat the surprising number of flu cases that sprang up. Chicago tripled its pharmacies in just a few years. The longest-serving bar in the great state of Wisconsin obtained a druggists' license to serve bitters, as it didn't require a prescription to sell. Fake Rabbis could dispense booze, and, of course, the mafia had their hay day (3). But, the one industry that truly suffered was the beer brewing industry.

The wine industry, if anything, sprung into new life from its relative nascency. The spirits industry took an odd turn, finding loopholes to sell beer via druggists and pharmacies, and storing reserves, waiting for the 21st Amendment. Many distilleries closed as well, though their products continued to flow through the market. But the brewers simply had too many obstacles (3). Beer wouldn't keep for years the way spirits would. It couldn't be conveniently made at home as easily as wine (though malt syrup was produced and sold, a product that could be converted to beer in a home environment). So brewers continued to fall. The big boys converted to malt beverage (near beer), and lobbied the government for the right to make some small amounts of beer for “medical purposes.” This allowed those larger breweries to keep trained brewers around and on hand, manning the equipment. (1) Further, many of the larger brewing conglomerates made offers to smaller brewers to buy their equipment; at a steep discount, of course. To business owners who could not operate their businesses, this was a frequently-chosen option.

Once Prohibition ended, in 1933, only around 750 breweries remained in the country. At that point, the Milwaukee brewers sprang into action in a new way, using their cheaply-acquired equipment to pump out enough beer to float the city of Chicago, and most of the Midwest. Their continuous investment throughout Prohibition actually made them stronger, and more competitive, than they had been prior, when they were already dominating the market. Those 750 breweries continued to dwindle in the face of the extremely cost-effective juggernauts of Miller and Anhueser-Busch, including other Baron breweries such as Blatz and Schlitz. By 1980, barely 100 breweries remained in the country, down from over 2,900 just 110 years earlier.

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(1) A Concise History of America’s Brewing Industry: Economic History Association

(2) Liberated Spirits; Hugh Ambrose and John Schuttler

(3) Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition; Daniel Okrent

(4) Prohibition and its Effects: Lisa Anderson