<strong>Beer in Numbers – Some Topical Beer Stats & Facts</strong>
As Pint Please just crossed the magical threshold of five million reviews, we decided to collect together more beer statistics and records for you to share.
Beer is a quite old invention that is said to have a history that stretches back 10 000 years, all the way back to the Upper Palaeolithic. But we tend to know the history of beer better starting from the Middle Ages.
Actually, the oldest brewery still in function dates back to the Middle Ages. Weihenstephan in Freiburg, Germany, has been producing beer since 1040, and the brewery building is already from the 8th century.
But which brewery is the newest one? It’s hard to say, because new breweries are established everyday.
In the UK alone, the number of breweries increases nearly every year by more than a hundred breweries. Last year 75 breweries were closed, but at the same time, there were 138 new breweries established.
Geographically viewed, there are some breweries in the world that are operating in extreme environments.
The northernmost brewery in the world is called Macks Ølbryggeri and it is located 69 degrees north and 19 degrees east, Nordkjosbotn in Norway, approximately 70 kilometres from the city of Tromsø.
Instead, the southernmost brewery in the world claims to be Cervecería Austral, located 53 degrees south and 70 degrees west, near the southernmost tip of Chile and South America, in Punta Arenas, Patagonia. Cervercería Austral is also the oldest brewery in Chile.
The three countries with the biggest beer sales are China, the United States and Brazil.
The most popular beer in China is called Snow Beer from CR Snow. The best selling beer used to be Tsingtao Beer by Tsingtao Brewery, which is still the most widely exported beer brand.
In the US, Bud Light from the Anheuser-Busch InBev Brewery has been for many years the most popular beer of America. It was first sold nationwide in 1982.
Meanwhile in Brazil, Skol from the Danish company Carlsberg Group is dominating the markets. Beer is produced with a licence in Brazil by AmBev.
Again, it’s harder to name the world’s smallest brewery as breweries tend to have about the same capacities in production.
But let’s see some stats from the craft beer markets in the UK.
The leading craft beer brand in the UK was last year Hells Lager by Camden Town Brewery when ranked by sales. On the second place there was Neck Oil Session IPA by Beavertown Brewery, and on the third place Punk IPA brewed by BrewDog.
Actually, in the UK the market size of craft beer production has grown 4.1% per year on average since 2017. At the moment, we are talking about 15.6% expected growth in this year’s craft beer production.
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