20+ Interesting Stats & Amazing Facts About Non-Alcoholic Beer

The non-alcoholic beer revolution is here, and there are no signs of its popularity waning.

Here are 23 facts and stats about low and no beer.

Sales of non-alcoholic beer

UK retail sales of non-alcoholic beer grew 37% in the UK in 2018/2019 ¹
However, worldwide growth of low and no alcohol beer slowed to just 0.5% year-on-year in 2019-20 ²
Despite this, it’s expected that the global market for low and no alcohol drinks will grow 31% between 2021 and 2024 ²
Non-alcoholic beer accounts for 92% of worldwide sales in the low and no drinks market ²
Almost 1 in 2 Germans drink non-alcoholic beer, which accounts for 7% of all retail beer sales in Germany ³

Almost 6 in 10 (58%) of people who drink no and low alcohol drinks switch between non-alcoholic and alcoholic options in the same sitting ²
Only 14% of drinkers of non-alcoholic drinks don’t drink alcohol at all ²
1 in 5 people in the UK don’t drink alcohol ⁴
Alcohol was the cause of more than 5,600 deaths in England in 2018 – this was 2% lower than 2017 and an increase of 7% in 2008 ⁵
In 2017, the average Brit drank 9.7 litres of alcohol in 2017 – this compares to 8.7 litres for the average American and 10.8 litres for the average Australian ⁶
Lithuanians are the biggest drinkers in the world, drinking an average of 12.3 litres per person in 2017 ⁶
1 in 7 UK adults planned to do Dry January in 2022 ⁷
Searches for “Dry January” on Google are declining year on year in the UK but increasing year on year in the US ^{8 9}
Taking a month off booze can help you cut down your alcohol intake in the longer term ¹⁰

In the EU and UK, drinks above 1.2% ABV don’t need to include the ingredients or nutritional info on the packaging ¹¹ ¹²
In most regions, retailers will insist that non-alcoholic beer can only be bought by those of legal drinking age
UK law allows beers up to 5.5% ABV a “tolerance” of 0.5% ABV either side of what’s shown on the label ¹²
In the UK, drinks under 1.2% ABV don’t need to include the alcoholic strength on the labelling ¹²

Low alcohol beer under 3% ABV (alcohol by volume) – known as “small beer” – was a common drink up until the 19th century ¹³
The first modern non-alcoholic beers appeared in the 1970s with the launch of NA lagers from Clausthaler (1972) and Ambar (1976) ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Drinking non-alcoholic beer can give you the same feeling of reward as drinking alcoholic beer ¹⁶
You can’t get drunk on 0.5% ABV (alcohol by volume) beer ¹⁷
Non-alcoholic beers are always lower in calories than their equivalent full-strength (because alcohol contains 7 calories per gram) ¹⁸
Non-alcoholic beer is likely to be higher in sugar than standard strength beer because of the way it’s made (although many non-alcoholic beers contain very low amounts of sugar) ¹⁸