Thursday 9 November 2017

Ale & Stout vs Lager sales 1960 - 2016

One of my recent free Fridays was spent scanning the BBPA Statistical Handbook. Loads of lovely juicy numbers in there.

All ripe for harvesting. But being off galivanting south of the equator, I'd not had time to sharpen my scythe and take to the fields. Though obviously you don't harvest fruit with a scythe. OK, forget about that analogy. I've got numbers, you're going to see them.

If you can remember back a few weeks, I scored a free copy of the 2017 BBPA Statistical Handbook through the British Guild of Beer Writers. If anyone does, I deserve the freebie. Sad to say, it's one of my favourite books. I can still remember the day Henry gave me a copy of the 1928 Brewers' Almanack (the previous incarnation of the book). It changed my view of British beer forever.

And gave me a stack of numbers to play with. Not that I needed any encouragement to get all hot and sticky with numbers.

Today's digital fun was in the form of beer style share. The 2017 Handbook has the figures for the market share of Lager and Ale & Stout for every year from 2000, plus 1970, 1980 and 1990. Interesting. But I like to take a longer view. And because I have a collection of the Handbooks and Almanacks, I can go back further and fill in the gaps.

This time in graph rather than rough number form.


Don't you just love data?

1 comment:

Chap said...

Nice chart. The founding of CAMRA in 1971 seems to have had no effect at all on the rate of decline in the market share of ale and stout - it's as near as dammit a straight line up to 2006 - while the fall only starts to flatten out as British drinkers become aware of American ales, hop bombs and craft beer!