Some food for thought at the Lieblingsbier.de web site. There is a general discussion on the trends in the German and Austrian markets, which is interesting enough. But the core of the blog post by Felix vom Endt is this (my translation):
I don’t mind if the beer consumption keeps falling in the years ahead. For me this is a clear sign that we as consumers don’t have less appetite for beer, but rather more appetite for the right beer. We choose more carefully and drink with more enjoyment, slower and with more thoughtfulness, mind and soul.
I could not agree more. And this is a good reason for having independent beer writers in the important beer countries of the world, pointing out that we care about quality, not about the quantity of the output om the global giants of the beer industry.
I also agree. Less EU beer consumption means more tasting knowledge. After drinking one good craft beer, you can’t drink marketing’s beer!
We have a post brewing on this subject. The fact is, we don’t drink very much, and certainly rarely drink enough in one session to get drunk. That’s probably why we are more tolerant the expense of ‘craft beer’ — because the overall cost of a session isn’t much higher.