In Norway. In a way. It’s a matter of reading the statistics.
Lars Marius Garshol, who puts more of an effort into his not too frequent blog posts than I do, has looked at the beer sales at the Norwegian state Wine Monopoly for 2012. The figures show that craft beer is overtaking the industrial beers, with 49 % of the sales.
These figures, however, only reflect beers with more than 4.75% alcohol by volume. But they are impressive anyway.
Read the whole story at Lars’ blog.
I’ve been thinking about this since Lars Marius posted it, and then looking at the Vinmonopolet website, and then thinking about it some more.
And I reckon it’s a natural consequence of three factors:
Prices of craft and industrial beer being broadly similar, availability being very similar too, and the ban on advertising further levelling the playing field.
I suspect that Norwegian pissheads preferring spirits to beer may be a factor as well.