teuchter
je suis teuchter
Some interesting stuff in there.The same thing happened to breweries back in the 80s and 90s as consolidation and falling on-trade sales reduced the number of breweries. Many independent brewers and their pubs disappeared as the trend to drinking at home took root (helped by the supermarkets using beer as a footfall driver and widening the price gap between off and on-trade beer and lager). It was the Gordon Brown Progressive Beer Duty in 2002 that kick-started the craft beer revolution with small-production brewers paying 50% of the taxable rate. The number of brewers in the UK rose quickly and is now still over 1800. There was a point where every railway arch in South London seemed to have a craft beer brewery. Inevitably not all will flourish or expand as they might wish and there has been a bit of shake-out recently as overall beer consumption has shrunk, the number of pubs fallen and the successful ones have been snapped up and increased their market share through better distribution and getting stocked in supermarkets. The same happened in the 80s with "indie" music which initially referred to the record labels and distribution but the definition became muddled as many leading indie bands moved to WEA etc (eg REM, Sonic Youth).
Overall I think the SIBA definition of "independent" is more useful than "craft" these days. Their 2024 report shows the decline of the on-trade v off-trade particularly in the last few years as well as a 5.6% drop in total beer consumption in the UK since 2019. I'm afraid there will be more small brewery failures than start-ups to come.
Look at what appears to be a post pandemic drop-off in 18-24 year olds ever drinking beer. So in that age group, less than a third ever drink beer and barely one in ten drink it more than once a week.
It would be interesting to see these figures extended back by 20 years.
If you'd asked me to guess how many people in the UK are teetotal I'd have put the number at way lower than 18% I think.
The number of non-drinkers doesn't seem to have changed massively over the past 5 years ... however look at the huge increase in non-alcoholic beer sales in just one year (why's that?)
I look at all this from the perspective of a one-time binge drinker who has become nearly teetotal over the course of the past ten years or so. For me the biggest change in that time is that decent non-alcoholic beers have become much more available than they used to be. My pub preferences are heavily influenced by whether or not they offer any choice of NA beers (rather than the dreaded scenario of Becks Blue or nothing).
It's still frustrating to go into my local supermarket and see a choice of 5 or 6 NA lager-type beers from the big breweries (which basically all taste the same) and nothing else. Brewdog (much hated on u75) were the first to manage to get a non-lager type NA beer onto supermarket shelves fairly widely.
jezg I don't believe I've ever seen a Brixton Brewery non-alcoholic beer, either in pubs or on the shelves of local supermarkets/off-licences. According to your website you do have one. Are retailers reluctant to stock non-alcoholic beers? I don't really understand why some seem not have realised that there is (I think) an increasing demand for non insipid NA beers. That is, ones that you can actually drink to enjoy rather than just to have something in your hand while with alcohol-drinking friends.