25 Great British Beer Facts

After tea, beer is the country’s most consumed drink, with around 28 million pints going down our necks each day. As beer drinking is clearly one of our favourite pastimes, here are some geeky beer facts to bore your friends with next time you’re having a drink down your local.

Beer first arrived in Blighty in the Neolithic period.

Today’s type of beer – that’s beer that uses hops for taste – took off in Britain sometime in the 1400s. Herbs were used for taste prior to that.

Under Roman rule, our urbane conquerors tried to wean us off beer by foisting their la-di-dah wine on us instead. However, our grunting and rustic forbears held fast to beer (in truth, grapes simply didn’t grow as well over here due to the climate).

UK beer has only been produced year-round since refrigeration techniques arrived 130 years ago. Until then, it was only made during milder months.

We’ve been paying tax on beer since Henry II first levied it in 1188 to fund his Crusades.

Today, beer duty stands at 41p a pint even before 20% VAT is added.

Across the Channel, the French only pay about 6p duty on a pint.

We have the second most punitive beer duty in Europe. Only Finland gets hit worse by the taxman.

Beer fills UK tax coffers to the tune of more than 7 billion annually.

There are around 700 small breweries in Britain.

You can buy around 2000 separate types of beer in the UK.

Britain makes 90% of all the beer that is sold in Britain.

We export 1.5 million pints of beer a day.

The beer industry directly supports over 400,000 UK jobs. That number rises to 600,000 when you include pubs.

We drink 28 million pints of ale or lager a day. Spread over the population, this equates to 100 litres each a year.

However, that only makes us the sixth biggest consumers of beer in the world. Ahead of us are the Austrians, Australians, Germans and Irish, with the Czechs at the very top of the beer drinking table with 156 litres consumed on average per person annually.

Five times as much beer as wine is downed in the UK annually.

British breweries use over a third of the country’s barley crop.

Beer mat collectors are called tegestologists.

Definition of a labeorphilist: someone who collects beer bottles.

A beer barrel holds 36 gallons (that’s 288 pints to you, sunshine).

A kilderkin holds 18 gallons (that’s 144 pints to you sir, have a nice day).

There are nine gallons in a firkin (72 pints).

UK brewers are green industry pioneers. Power consumption is down 45%, and water consumption and CO2 greenhouse gas emissions are down 40% since 1976.

Cellarbright is one of the top Automated Beer Cleaner brands in the UK selling Automated Beer Line Cleaning at really affordable prices. Automated Beer Line Cleaning has never been so fast and simple!