In the first half of 2023, people in Germany drank less beer than in the same period last year. The domestic sales of German breweries fell by 3.5 percent to 3.4 billion liters, as announced by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden on Tuesday. Non-alcoholic beer, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly popular: According to the information, the production volume has increased by 96 percent by 2022 compared to 2012, almost doubling.
In the case of beer with alcohol, however, sales fell by a good twelve percent over the past ten years. This confirms the long-term trend of declining thirst for beer, which was only briefly broken in 2022 when compared to the pandemic years, the statistical office said.
Accordingly, there has also been a decline in mixed beer beverages. Compared to the first half of 2022, 8.6 percent fewer mixtures were recently sold. “However, with 211.1 million liters, they only accounted for five percent of total beer sales,” said the statistics office.
Although non-alcoholic beer is becoming more and more popular, its alcoholic counterpart is still clearly ahead overall. According to the statistics office, 474 million liters of the non-alcoholic drink were produced in 2022; in the same year it was 7.6 billion liters of beer with alcohol.
The monthly figures show a “conspicuous seasonal pattern”. Just as clearly as beer sales increase in the spring and summer months, “they drop again in autumn and winter,” the statisticians explained.
Overall – i.e. at home and abroad – sales by German brewers fell by 2.9 percent to 4.2 billion liters in the first half of the year. Sales abroad fell by 0.4 percent in EU countries and 0.2 percent in non-EU countries. More than 80 percent of the beer was sold domestically.
