Beer production in East and West

Yes, more DDR stuff. At least I've thrown in some stuff about West Germany, too.

The DDR was behind the West in terms of consumption per capita for most of its existence. Just about catching up towards the end. What does that tell us? Well, just that the East recovered more slowly from WW II. And beer output took a while to catch up with unfulfilled demand.

Would people have drunk more in the DDR in the 1950s and 1960s if it had been available? Probably. Assuming they had the money to pay for it. But the production capacity and raw materials simply weren't there to brew more beer.

Getting on for three litres a week is quite a lot of beer. That's probably about as much as I drink nowadays. Along with a couple of litres of whisky.

I've not much more to say. Just lean back and admire the numbers. They deserve that.

Beer production and consumption in the 2 bits of Germany 1950 - 2000
	DDR			BRD
Year	Production Soft Drinks	Production Beer	Per capita consumption Beer in liters	Beer consumption	Per capita consumption in liters
1950	923	3,820	22	18,176	35.6
1955	1,416	11,772	52		67
1960	3,546	13,424	68.5	52,633	94.7
1965	4,765	13,633	79.5	72,063	122.1
1970	6,470	16,642	95.7	85,603	141.1
1975	11,443	20,380	119.2	91,408	147.8
1980	13,094	23,633	139.7	89,820	145.9
1985	14,409	24,288	140	88,977	145.8
1989	17,661	24,843	141	88,586	142.7
1990				98,283	142.7
1991				113,871	141.9
1992				114,424	142
2000				103,309	125.6
Source:
Die Brau- und Malzindustrie in Deutschland-Ost zwischen 1945 und 1989, VLB, 2016, page 301.