Demand for low-strength and alcohol-free beer has soared 381 per cent in two years as drinkers try healthier tipples.
The huge sales jump comes as more breweries specialise in low-booze beer, while established brewers like Beck’s add no-alcohol varieties to their range.
The UK’s biggest beer festival, the Campaign For Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival in London, even offered alcohol-free beer for the first time last year.
Demand is so great that some supermarkets are creating aisles dedicated to the healthier ales.
A pint of alcohol-free beer typically contains 150 calories compared with 190 for standard lager and as much as 240 for a strong beer.
The surging sales are partly based on the growing popularity of beer cans.
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Three years ago they represented only 16 per cent of packaged craft beer, compared with 72 per cent of the market now.
David Jackson, boss of online craft beer distributor EeBriaTrade, said: “Craft beer is a rapidly growing area of the beer industry, but it can be hard to track what’s going on in such a fast-moving space.
“The whole craft beer market is exploding all across Europe at the moment.”
Craft lager is also on the rise, although it remains a small part of the sector at just six per cent of all sales.
The findings are based on data from more than 600 craft breweries – smaller, independent outfits within the industry.
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The British Beer And Pub Association, representing pub chains, says overall beer sales were up 2.6 per cent last year compared to 2017.
That is the highest rise for 45 years and was helped by the football World Cup and the scorching summer.
But despite that increase, sales are 36 per cent down from their 1970s peak.
Drinkers guzzled some 7.9 billion pints last year, compared with a mighty 12 billion in 1979.
