Beer market ‘going strong’

Australians drank less beer in the past financial year than in any of the previous 65 years but local brewers say the industry is going gangbusters.

A report by CommSec found Australians were drinking 4.23 litres of pure alcohol in beer per person in 2010-11 down from 4.45 litres the year before.

Old Coast Road Brewery brewer Andrew Harris said his business had not noticed a drop off in beer sales in the last year however he flagged an increase in the consumption of mid strength beers.

‘‘I much prefer a mid strength beer nowadays for a number of reasons — you’ve often got to drive, I’ve got kids, I’ve got obligations,’’ he said.

According to the report consumption of full strength beer fell from 3.67 litres to 3.49 litres while mid strength dropped from 0.57 litres to 0.56 litres.

The trend towards lighter beers has pushed Mr Harris to drop the alcohol volume of one of his brewery’s four beers from 4 per cent to 3 per cent.

Mr Harris is also the treasurer of the WA Brewers Association which promotes quality beer over quantity.

‘‘So rather than drinking lots and lots of pretty ordinary mass produced beer, have a smaller amount of something really, really nice — you might pay a bit more for it but you’ll probably enjoy it a lot more,’’ he said.

It is an adage supported by Mash Bunbury manager Tim McKenna who said his waterfront bar had just finished its biggest summer ever.

Mr McKenna said the craft beers produced by Mash were more popular than ever.

Unable to meet local demand, the Bunbury bar has even had to stop producing beer in-house and instead has its beer produced at Mash’s Swan Valley brewery.

The Apparent Consumption of Alcohol report produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics also found Australian alcohol consumption had fallen across the board from 184 million litres of pure alcohol in 2009-10 to 182 million litres last year.

The report found beer consumption was down 3.4 per cent and wine down 0.6 per cent while spirits increased by 4.8 per cent.

Beer made up 42 per cent of all alcohol consumption while wine came in at 37 per cent.