Today Is the International Beer Day!
The International Beer Day is a global celebration of beer, taking place in pubs, breweries, and backyards all over the world. It’s a day for beer lovers everywhere to raise a toast to our brewers and bartenders and rejoice in the greatness of beer!
The International Beer Day takes place annually on the first Friday in August. It is celebrated in August 2008 for the first time. Today it is celebrated in over 200 cities globally.
August was chosen for its summer weather and distance from other beer celebrations.
According to Eurostat, over 39 billion litres of beer containing alcohol were produced in the European Union (EU) for the last year. The EU’s beer production was equivalent to around 76 litres per inhabitant.
In addition, in 2018 the EU produced over 1 billion litres of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all.
Two-thirds of the beer containing alcohol produced in the EU came from six Member States. Germany was the top producer in 2018 with a production of 8.3 billion litres (or 21% of the EU total production). In other words, about one in every five beers containing alcohol produced in the EU originated from Germany.
Germany was followed by the United Kingdom (4.5 billion litres produced, or 12%), Poland (4.0 bn litres, or 10%), Spain (3.6 bn litres, or 9%), the Netherlands (2.4 bn litres, or 6%) and Belgium (2.4 bn litres, or 6%).
Compared with 2017, Italy recorded the largest increase in the production of beer containing alcohol (21%), followed by Hungary (11%) and Czechia (6%).
In contrast, the production of beer in the United Kingdom fell by 20%, in both Austria and Slovakia by 10%, and in the Netherlands by 9%.