Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow

The German brewery industry just announced that beer consumption in Germany is falling…again. In eight of the last nine years, beer consumption in that country has declined.

This is a country that takes beer seriously: there are over 1200 breweries there alone. The peak of consumption was in the 1980s, when Germans drank 156 liters of beer per capita per year. The numbers fell in 2007 by 3.5 liters, to a mere 112.5 liters for each man, woman, and child.

The only year with an increase? 2006, when it hosted the World Cup.

The reigning world leader in consumption? My home country of the Czech Republic, where we downed 158 liters per person, or over 104 pints every second.

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