UK beer sales by type 1971 - 1981 (%)

What a different world the 1970's were. At the start of the decade, draught Bitter and Mild made up around two-thirds of all beer sales. And Lager could only manage 10% of the market across both draught and bottled. By the decade's end, draught Lager was rapidly closing in on Bitter.

The headline is the huge growth in popularity. Notice the big jump in Lager sales in 1975 and 1976. Two years with particularly hot summers. I'm guessing that if I had the numbers broken down by month that a lot of the growth would have occurred during the hotter months. Over the whole period, Lager sales increased by 227%. Which is a fuck load by anyone's standards.

The biggest losers were bottled beers: Brown Ale, down 65%, and Stout, down 57%. Not helped by by the fact that bottled beer sales were down 23%. You can see that once popular beers, such as Light Ale and Brown Ale, were on their way to oblivion. The fall in bottled sales would have been even more dramatic, had their not been 168% increase in Lager sales.

These can't have been very good time for Guinness, as they totally dominated the Stout market. And bottles Stout was one of the biggest losers. Though this may have been distorted by increasing sales of draught Guinness. Unfortunately, this is impossible to see as draught Stout was, for some reason, lumped in with Bitter.

Amongst the draught beers, Mild sales fell 37% and Bitter sales 7%. Not as bad as the decline in bottled beers, but still significant. In the later decades, as Mild vanished into the void, Bitter sales would come under more pressure. As we will see in a later post.

Sales of Strong Ales were tiny. In 1981, just 318,000 hl. Out of a total consumption of 63.6 million hl. 

UK beer sales by type 1971 - 1981 (%)
Type	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975	1976	1977	1978	1979	1980	1981	change 1971-1981
Draught
Mild	17.7	15.9	14.2	13.8	13.3	12.6	12.7	11.9	11.4	11.3	11.2	-36.72%
Bitter & Stout	48.7	48.9	47.6	47.4	46.9	45.9	46.8	45.6	44.7	44.5	45.1	-7.39%
Lager:	7.1	8.6	11.3	12.6	15.6	18.5	19.0	20.6	22.1	23.0	23.2	226.76%
total draught	73.5	73.4	73.1	73.8	75.8	77.0	78.5	78.1	78.2	78.8	79.5	8.16%
Bottled
Light, Pale and Export:	11.5	11.4	11.9	11.7	10.9	9.9	8.9	8.5	8.1	7.5	7.4	-35.65%
Lager:	2.8	3.1	3.5	3.7	4.2	5.1	5.4	6.3	7.0	7.6	7.5	167.86%
Brown:	4.0	3.9	3.7	3.5	2.8	2.4	2.0	1.9	1.8	1.6	1.4	-65.00%
Stout:	7.0	6.8	6.4	5.9	5.0	4.3	3.9	3.7	3.5	3.2	3.0	-57.14%
Strong Ales and Barley Wines	0.6	0.7	0.7	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.5	-16.67%
party containers	0.6	0.7	0.7	0.8	0.7	0.7	0.7	0.9	0.9	0.7	0.6	0.00%
Total bottled	26.5	26.6	26.9	26.2	24.2	23.0	21.5	21.9	21.8	21.1	20.4	-23.02%
Source:
The Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1980, page 10.
The Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1988, page 15.