UK alcohol consumption 1852 - 1914

When I extracted these figures from a couple of editions of the Brewers' Almanack, I was surprised to notice that I didn't have a spreadsheet for beer consumption. Very strange, that. Especially as I do have a table on one of my statistics web pages.

As with beer production, the general trend in consumption was to increase until 1900, then fall into decline. With the exception of the odd blip, such as WW II, the decline continued until 1960.

To put the numbers into context, in more recent times, beer consumption per capita was - 1970: 103 litres, 1980: 118.3 litres, 1990: 113.9 litres and 2000: 88.4 litres. It should be borne in mind that beer was much stronger pre-WW I, averaging around 5% ABV.  While that in post-WW II it was just 3.7% ABV.  To consume the same amount of alcohol, you’d need to drink a third more beer.

The same rise, peak, then decline across the period is seen in both wines and spirits. All three peaking in 1900. That suggests to me that larger factors were at play and not just beer becoming less popular.

UK Alcohol consumption per capita 1852 - 1914 (litres)
Year ended Dec. 31.	Spirits.
	British	Foreign & Colonial	all	Foreign Wines	Beer	pure alcohol
1852	4.14	0.77	4.96	1.05	99.83	8.73
1862	2.91	0.77	3.73	1.50	103.51	8.18
1872	3.82	1.27	5.09	2.36	144.66	11.6
1882	3.68	1.05	4.73	1.82	125.65	10.22
1885	3.32	1.00	4.32	1.73	124.02	9.83
1890	3.55	1.05	4.64	1.77	136.47	10.77
1895	3.50	0.91	4.50	1.68	134.66	10.57
1897	3.68	0.91	4.59	1.77	138.61
1900	4.32	1.05	5.36	1.91	146.79	11.79
1901	4.05	0.95	5.00	1.64	143.11	11.29
1902	3.68	0.91	4.59	1.59	139.38	10.87
1903	3.77	0.91	4.68	1.68	137.93	10.85
1904	3.64	0.86	4.50	1.41	134.16	10.5
1905	3.50	0.73	4.23	1.23	129.15	10.04
1906	3.41	0.73	4.14	1.23	126.84	9.8
1907	3.36	0.77	4.14	1.27	126.43	9.81
1908	3.36	0.73	4.09	1.23	125.61	9.74
1909	3.27	0.68	3.96	1.14	120.34	9.34
1910	2.18	0.45	2.64	1.14	122.15	8.43
1911	2.55	0.55	3.09	1.23	118.70	8.76
1912	2.55	0.55	3.09	1.09	124.34	9.07
1913	2.50	0.55	3.05	1.09	122.20	8.94
1914	2.64	0.59	3.23	1.14	125.06	9.19
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1912, page 156.
Brewers' Almanack 1922, pages 116 and 129.