Beer sale bounces back

Beer sales in the UK are recovering to pre-pandemic levels after a dip in 2020, says a new report, suggesting Britons are coming back to old habit of drinking beer.

According to UHY Hacker Young, 4.6 billion liters of beer were sold in 2021, up by 13 percent from 4.1 billion in 2020. The increase is equivalent to 1.1 billion pints of beer.

Spirits sales decrease as a result, states the report.

James Simmonds from UHY Hacker Young says that people drinking at home during the height of the pandemic replaced beer with wine or spirits, resulting in a 13 percent fall in beer sales in 2020. Now pubs have reopened, beer sales have swiftly recovered to 98 percent of their pre-pandemic 2019 level.

Many people feel that beer is better-suited to longer, social drinking sessions. As people were forced to drink at home during the repeated lockdowns, many preferred to drink wine or spirits, says the report.

During lockdown, wine sales increased to 112 million litres in 2020, up from 84 million in 2019, while spirit sales increased to 10.9 million litres from 7.4 million over the same period. However, they both subsequently suffered from pubs reopening, with a drop in sales equivalent to 5.2 million bottles of wine (3 percent) and 1.8 million bottles of spirits (12 percent) in 2021 compared to 2020.

“The pandemic saw a sudden shift in people’s drinking habits, with a move away from beer. That seems to have been temporary – we are now seeing consumers flooding back to beer,” Simmonds said.

“It was a good summer for beer sales, with football’s European Championships providing a welcome sales boost for pubs.”

Simmonds adds that some small breweries may have only held licences to sell to the pub trade, but not to sell directly to the public. Many breweries potentially struggled to acquire licence to begin direct sales to the public quickly when the pandemic began, contributing to a downturn in 2020 sales.