POPULAR BEER

NZ Truth, Issue 1062, 1 April 1926, Page 1

POPULAR BEER

NATIONAL DRINK Some Thirsty Facts (From "Truth's" Special London Rep.) According to the report of the Commissioner of Customs and Excise for the year ending March 31, 1925, beer is still most emphatically England's drink. The consumption, however, is falling from the happy pre-war days when a man could buy more than he could comfoi tably ' hold ' for a shilling. In 1913-14 the quantity of beer produced m Gi-eat Britain was 31,79.1,000 standard barrels, while m 1924-25 it was only 20,950,000 barrels plus about a million and a half barrels imported from the Irish Free State. With the drop m production there is also noted a drop m the number of brewers' licenses. A generation ago nearly every town and village had its own brewer, but to-day the business is being absorbed into fewer and fewer hands. In 1870, for example, there were 34,450 brewers making beer for sale; m 19?4-25 there were less than 2000, and of these five per cent, do per cent, or more, of the trade. The decline m beer drinking, however, is as nothing compared with the fall m spirit production, which was I. ' ri\

less by about 15 per cent, m 1924-25 than m 1913-14— or 35,650,000 gallons of prcof spirits against 42,000,000, while consumption showed a greater proportionate drop. In 1913-14 England and Wales drank 22,560,000 gallons or .61 per head, while Scotland disposed of 6,850,000 gallons — 1.45 ocr head. For 1924-25 the consumption . for England and Wales had dropped to just fcalf of that of the earlier period [ and m Scotland to under half (2,843,000 'gallons), the per head percentages being respectively .29 and .SS. T'ne decline, of course, is due to •the high price and heavy duty on spirits, which, for the consumption of 12,287,000 gallons of homemade spirits brought m £42,824,---000, beer yielding to the revenue nearly £82,000,000. Theie is now m bond m Great Britain a supply of 136,000,000 gallons of proof spirit.