E-Malt.com News article: UK: The beer slump means pubs will disappear

Even if you're not a beer drinker, the collapse in demand for beer is going to affect you. The beer slump means pubs will disappear. And soon every high street and village in Britain will change for ever, The Telegraph published April 11.

Residential pub conversions in town are already booming. In the country, the Old Pub will soon be a prime address for weekend cottages, right next to the Old Rectory and the Old Smithy.

The latest figures are bleak for landlords. Last year, 1,409 pubs closed, almost seven times more than in 2006. Beer sales have halved in 30 years to below 30 million pints a day, the lowest since the 1930s, when industrial Britain still had a huge, ever-expanding thirst for beer.

British drinking habits have always been fluid, with great passing fads for new drinks.

Beer had a similar collapse after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Dutch introduced gin. By 1740, six times as much gin as beer was drunk in Britain; half of London's 15,000 drinking places were gin shops.

Hogarth painted Gin Lane, his grim picture of the effects of spirits, in 1751, at the height of a full-blown Gin Craze - the government had just cut gin prices to encourage distilling and prop up the price of grain. To cater to the new demand, gin shops and huge, dazzling gin palaces mushroomed across the country.

It was only with Wellington's Beer Act of 1830, removing all beer duty, that pubs could fight back.

Within a year, 31,000 new beer licences had been issued, and the Victorian pub-building boom began. It's those pubs that are closing down now.

Today, beer has been eclipsed by wine, spirits, and even a revival of cider. The odd and sad thing about this latest change in drinking habits is that no new drinking places have emerged to replace the pub.


11 April, 2008